Saturday, June 26, 2010
It's summer!
School ended Wednesday (WOOHOO!) and it's summer! That means lost of sleeping late, lots of movies, and lots of writing and reading! In just three or four days I've already written about 4000 words in my book - getting really close to the end! I have to say, I'm a bit scared of finishing since then I have to do my least favorite stage -- revising -- but at the same time, I've only gotten that "holy crap I finished!" feeling once before, and it was exhilarating. I'm definitely looking forward to THAT!
Thursday, June 17, 2010
So I'm looking to enter a 100 word contest. I wrote two poems for it. Trust me, they're both 100 words. Which is better? Can you give me a reason why? Any suggestions?
POEM ONE
I face front and wince at the spotlight.
“I’m here for Everyman One.”
A pause; excruciating wait.
“Show us what you got,” comes The Voice from the dark.
Inhale.
I begin small, cries and lullabies.
School days and take me out to the ball game.
Pomp and circumstance twice separated by a beat of four.
Heigh ho Heigh ho
And to a wedding march I go
Beat Beat And. . .
Cries and lullabies
School days repeat
Slowly creeping in my petty pace from tomorrow to tomorrow
To a funereal march.
Exhale.
The Voice speaks once more.
“We’ll let you know.”
POEM TWO
One second is all it takes.
Move forward and nothing is the same.
Back a tick and the status quo is a rock.
The wave rushes from behind us
Pushing through that moment and inexorably to the next.
But what if we could fight the tide, step back over the line we’ve crossed despite the pounding rush?
If we could step back
Rewind to before the ball left our hand
Or the word left our lips
Or the bullet left the gun
Or the match slipped from our fingers
Would we even know that we had to do it differently?
POEM ONE
I face front and wince at the spotlight.
“I’m here for Everyman One.”
A pause; excruciating wait.
“Show us what you got,” comes The Voice from the dark.
Inhale.
I begin small, cries and lullabies.
School days and take me out to the ball game.
Pomp and circumstance twice separated by a beat of four.
Heigh ho Heigh ho
And to a wedding march I go
Beat Beat And. . .
Cries and lullabies
School days repeat
Slowly creeping in my petty pace from tomorrow to tomorrow
To a funereal march.
Exhale.
The Voice speaks once more.
“We’ll let you know.”
POEM TWO
One second is all it takes.
Move forward and nothing is the same.
Back a tick and the status quo is a rock.
The wave rushes from behind us
Pushing through that moment and inexorably to the next.
But what if we could fight the tide, step back over the line we’ve crossed despite the pounding rush?
If we could step back
Rewind to before the ball left our hand
Or the word left our lips
Or the bullet left the gun
Or the match slipped from our fingers
Would we even know that we had to do it differently?
Monday, June 7, 2010
Ten things
Just some points of thought:
1)I'm so ready for school to be done. For so many reasons.
2)Ragtime doesn't work if Sarah can't sing.
3) I think I may have pushed a limit in my novel. My goal was to turn a sympathetic character "evil" - trouble is she's a 12 year old girl and I'm wondering now if I pushed what "evil" is too far. I guess I'll have to wait and see where the book is going and possibly pull it back (it is meant to be middle grade fiction)some. Of course, if the stakes aren't high enough, the whole thing becomes pointless. I feel like I'm getting close to the climax of the book (I'm at 33,000 words of a projected 50-60)so I need to figure out how to play this just right...
4) Ipod shuffle is like the debate between free will and predestination. Caitie and I believe the shuffle pre-determines your playlist -- setting it in place when you start the list. Will Apple create a list that does have free will and can adjust as you skip songs? If so, is this just another frightening step toward real AI? Where will it end??
5)Unless you're Caitie, Jess, or Dan I can go to sleep tonight relatively sure I saw a movie this weekend you have never seen and never will: it was called "House" and it was Japanese and it was really really weird. Really weird.
6) As I'm typing this we have on the special about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios. I want to go to there.
7) I already miss Lost.
8) When did the MTV Movie Awards become "The Twilight Zone?"
9)I'm going to a baseball game with my father tomorrow night for the first time in my life. This is very surprising to me. Not that we've never gone, but that we are at all as neither of us really care about baseball.
10) Did I mention I can't wait until school is over? I think I did. Going back in September is going to be damn near impossible. Sigh.
1)I'm so ready for school to be done. For so many reasons.
2)Ragtime doesn't work if Sarah can't sing.
3) I think I may have pushed a limit in my novel. My goal was to turn a sympathetic character "evil" - trouble is she's a 12 year old girl and I'm wondering now if I pushed what "evil" is too far. I guess I'll have to wait and see where the book is going and possibly pull it back (it is meant to be middle grade fiction)some. Of course, if the stakes aren't high enough, the whole thing becomes pointless. I feel like I'm getting close to the climax of the book (I'm at 33,000 words of a projected 50-60)so I need to figure out how to play this just right...
4) Ipod shuffle is like the debate between free will and predestination. Caitie and I believe the shuffle pre-determines your playlist -- setting it in place when you start the list. Will Apple create a list that does have free will and can adjust as you skip songs? If so, is this just another frightening step toward real AI? Where will it end??
5)Unless you're Caitie, Jess, or Dan I can go to sleep tonight relatively sure I saw a movie this weekend you have never seen and never will: it was called "House" and it was Japanese and it was really really weird. Really weird.
6) As I'm typing this we have on the special about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios. I want to go to there.
7) I already miss Lost.
8) When did the MTV Movie Awards become "The Twilight Zone?"
9)I'm going to a baseball game with my father tomorrow night for the first time in my life. This is very surprising to me. Not that we've never gone, but that we are at all as neither of us really care about baseball.
10) Did I mention I can't wait until school is over? I think I did. Going back in September is going to be damn near impossible. Sigh.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
COOL!
I've been linked on a major Lost blog:
http://nikkistafford.blogspot.com/2010/05/time-for-me-to-let-you-talk.html
Cool!!!
http://nikkistafford.blogspot.com/2010/05/time-for-me-to-let-you-talk.html
Cool!!!
An interesting contest...
Megan Rebekah, whose blog I follow, is running a contest:
http://meganrebekahblogs.blogspot.com/2010/05/woohoo-contest.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MeganRebekahBlogs+%28Megan+Rebekah+Blogs%29
It's definitely worth checking out!!!
http://meganrebekahblogs.blogspot.com/2010/05/woohoo-contest.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MeganRebekahBlogs+%28Megan+Rebekah+Blogs%29
It's definitely worth checking out!!!
Monday, May 24, 2010
The end of Lost and storytelling thoughts
NOTE: This isn't so much a review of the episode as a pondering on the greater meaning of the story-telling process "Lost" has given us the past six years.
Well, it's over. Six years of thinking, pondering, questioning, analyzing, being moved and excited, staying up nights thinking about the possibilities - finished. "Lost" changed the way I, and many others, think about storytelling and, to an even greater extent, our lives. The show will go down in history as one of, if not the greatest of all time.
Was the ending completely fulfilling? Simultaneously yes and no, an only too fitting answer for "Lost." It's easy to point to the flaws: there were many questions the series set up for us as viewers over the course of its run that it never answered. Some were basic stuff we can take on faith: why does the sonic fence stop Smokey? (answer: it just does), why does the donkey wheel move the island? (it just does), was there a REASON for those particular numbers? (nope, just the numbers Jacob had assigned to each candidate). Some questions can be derived from what we know: I have theories on the fertility issue and what the island actually was. Some are just going to be left open and never answered: What did Annie have to do with anything? What was the deal with the cabin? (though maybe an answer for that is in there somewhere) What was the deal with the brand on Juliet?
So yes, some things weren't answered to our satisfaction, or at all, but in the end, the question is does it matter? Like Mother said, every question leads to another -- on one level it does and on another it doesn't at all.
The reason it does matter is that the writers have built up a trust with the audience. Whether explicitly or implicitly, the writers of ANYTHING promise to complete the story they lay out for us, or else leave the reader/viewer wondering. They make a deal: we'll set up the premise and give you resolution, you sit back and enjoy the ride and we'll tell you a story. Anyone can propose a scenario, make it as bizarre as they want, but if they don't have a satisfactory resolution to the scenario, then they haven't really done their job. The creators of "Lost" reneged on part of their bargain with the audience. They set things up in this story that they never answered, never gave us reason for, not even the TOOLS to figure them out. They knew all along the viewers were trying to puzzle these mysteries out, and it seems wildly unfair of them, given that they knew when the show would end, to not give us the answer to the questions THEY posed in the first place. When viewed that way, and that way alone, "The End" was a failure of almost epic proportions.
What the writers managed to do, though, is make my entire previous paragraph not matter. Why it doesn't matter is the same answer to the first question I posed: was the ending fulfilling in the end? While we didn't get every answer, we got a completion to the story. We got character resolution that was some of the absolute best story-telling I've ever seen. We got an exciting two and a half hours full of incredible drama (Jack and Locke on the cliff face), touching reunions (Sawyer and Juliet! Charlie and Claire!), fond remembrances of the six years (very clever use of the flashes), and inside nods to loyal viewers. The season long story of the sideways world came to a completely satisfactory ending, a beautiful story of redemption and promise. In that sense, "Lost" succeeded on an incredibly profound and beautiful level.
The island story is a bit trickier. The island is where our answers should have come from. No Dharma initiative, no cabin, no Smokey. Still, the CHARACTER'S stories were completely resolved. Maybe the mysteries aren't meant to be solved. After all, no one dies understanding all there is to understand, and isn't that, in the end what the show was about?
I have a theory that the island was really a metaphor for life - on one level the events there really happened, but on another the entire series was a metaphor for the paths of our lives - that all of us are flawed and have chances to improve ourselves through the people we meet and choices we make. We have to fight evil on a daily basis. We have to work with those around us to achieve a greater goal. We have to love those who matter to us. We have to deal with situations that make no sense to us. We have to contend with people trying to grab power, organizations that seek to run/affect our lives that are so much greater than ourselves, people with contrary points of view, and we have to come out the other side having learned from them to make ourselves better people. "Lost" gave us all that on the island. In the end, does it MATTER how MIB became a smoke monster or even what his name was?
I don't know. In the end, the series held a mirror up to us, let us look at ourselves in a new way, and examine our own views on our own journeys. I do know the series gave us a metaphorical view of life that no other series ever has, or probably ever will. The minutiae is important, sure, and there is a level of disappointment, but the overwhelming feeling at the end I have is one of profound gratefulness for six years of wonderful stories, questions to mull over, and more importantly, resolution for the lives of the characters we've come to know for six years.
Thank you "Lost" -- you will be missed.
Namaste.
Well, it's over. Six years of thinking, pondering, questioning, analyzing, being moved and excited, staying up nights thinking about the possibilities - finished. "Lost" changed the way I, and many others, think about storytelling and, to an even greater extent, our lives. The show will go down in history as one of, if not the greatest of all time.
Was the ending completely fulfilling? Simultaneously yes and no, an only too fitting answer for "Lost." It's easy to point to the flaws: there were many questions the series set up for us as viewers over the course of its run that it never answered. Some were basic stuff we can take on faith: why does the sonic fence stop Smokey? (answer: it just does), why does the donkey wheel move the island? (it just does), was there a REASON for those particular numbers? (nope, just the numbers Jacob had assigned to each candidate). Some questions can be derived from what we know: I have theories on the fertility issue and what the island actually was. Some are just going to be left open and never answered: What did Annie have to do with anything? What was the deal with the cabin? (though maybe an answer for that is in there somewhere) What was the deal with the brand on Juliet?
So yes, some things weren't answered to our satisfaction, or at all, but in the end, the question is does it matter? Like Mother said, every question leads to another -- on one level it does and on another it doesn't at all.
The reason it does matter is that the writers have built up a trust with the audience. Whether explicitly or implicitly, the writers of ANYTHING promise to complete the story they lay out for us, or else leave the reader/viewer wondering. They make a deal: we'll set up the premise and give you resolution, you sit back and enjoy the ride and we'll tell you a story. Anyone can propose a scenario, make it as bizarre as they want, but if they don't have a satisfactory resolution to the scenario, then they haven't really done their job. The creators of "Lost" reneged on part of their bargain with the audience. They set things up in this story that they never answered, never gave us reason for, not even the TOOLS to figure them out. They knew all along the viewers were trying to puzzle these mysteries out, and it seems wildly unfair of them, given that they knew when the show would end, to not give us the answer to the questions THEY posed in the first place. When viewed that way, and that way alone, "The End" was a failure of almost epic proportions.
What the writers managed to do, though, is make my entire previous paragraph not matter. Why it doesn't matter is the same answer to the first question I posed: was the ending fulfilling in the end? While we didn't get every answer, we got a completion to the story. We got character resolution that was some of the absolute best story-telling I've ever seen. We got an exciting two and a half hours full of incredible drama (Jack and Locke on the cliff face), touching reunions (Sawyer and Juliet! Charlie and Claire!), fond remembrances of the six years (very clever use of the flashes), and inside nods to loyal viewers. The season long story of the sideways world came to a completely satisfactory ending, a beautiful story of redemption and promise. In that sense, "Lost" succeeded on an incredibly profound and beautiful level.
The island story is a bit trickier. The island is where our answers should have come from. No Dharma initiative, no cabin, no Smokey. Still, the CHARACTER'S stories were completely resolved. Maybe the mysteries aren't meant to be solved. After all, no one dies understanding all there is to understand, and isn't that, in the end what the show was about?
I have a theory that the island was really a metaphor for life - on one level the events there really happened, but on another the entire series was a metaphor for the paths of our lives - that all of us are flawed and have chances to improve ourselves through the people we meet and choices we make. We have to fight evil on a daily basis. We have to work with those around us to achieve a greater goal. We have to love those who matter to us. We have to deal with situations that make no sense to us. We have to contend with people trying to grab power, organizations that seek to run/affect our lives that are so much greater than ourselves, people with contrary points of view, and we have to come out the other side having learned from them to make ourselves better people. "Lost" gave us all that on the island. In the end, does it MATTER how MIB became a smoke monster or even what his name was?
I don't know. In the end, the series held a mirror up to us, let us look at ourselves in a new way, and examine our own views on our own journeys. I do know the series gave us a metaphorical view of life that no other series ever has, or probably ever will. The minutiae is important, sure, and there is a level of disappointment, but the overwhelming feeling at the end I have is one of profound gratefulness for six years of wonderful stories, questions to mull over, and more importantly, resolution for the lives of the characters we've come to know for six years.
Thank you "Lost" -- you will be missed.
Namaste.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Big writing moment
Now I'm in a jam. I had my idea for a new novel, and I loved the idea - not something I usually do. I began writing, and have been going at it for the past couple of months. The CONCEPT, I think, is great.
I'm not a fan of brainstorming as anyone who knows how I write knows. I just go to it, and plan in my head as I go. This generally works. This book is an interesting case. I had my initial idea for a turning point in the story and filled in the details leading up to it. All well and good. I like what I have right now A LOT. I've been building and building to this climax, layering what I anticipate to be quite a bit of foreshadowing. I have about 20,000 words of build up, 3,000 of the turning point. I'm aiming for 60,000 or so total.
I know where the story is heading in general. I know what the ending will be (or as much as it's possible for me to know). The problem is, I have a good 20,000 words to fill before I get there. I've laid the groundwork for it, but that interim until the climax is going to be VERY tough!
Ah well, just putting that out there. Basically stalling....
I'm not a fan of brainstorming as anyone who knows how I write knows. I just go to it, and plan in my head as I go. This generally works. This book is an interesting case. I had my initial idea for a turning point in the story and filled in the details leading up to it. All well and good. I like what I have right now A LOT. I've been building and building to this climax, layering what I anticipate to be quite a bit of foreshadowing. I have about 20,000 words of build up, 3,000 of the turning point. I'm aiming for 60,000 or so total.
I know where the story is heading in general. I know what the ending will be (or as much as it's possible for me to know). The problem is, I have a good 20,000 words to fill before I get there. I've laid the groundwork for it, but that interim until the climax is going to be VERY tough!
Ah well, just putting that out there. Basically stalling....
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