not a musician:

Playing this week, “I Will Follow You Into the Dark,” by Death Cab For Cutie. (listen here, good guitar lesson here.) I’m in love with this song this week. It’s quiet and beautiful, and it inspired a heartbreaking little story idea.

not a film critic:

Into the Wild: Very thoughtful, and inspiring. Now I wanna backpack through Alaska. I know, the book is usually better, but my “to-read” list is a mile long already. Hubby read it and enjoyed it, and was able to point out where the differences were. I’m wondering if the film might have better suited the visuals of an adventure anyway?

I expected to be bored by it, but I absolutely wasn’t. I mean, how interesting can one guy be out in the wilderness? But the point is, he spent much of his journey meeting very interesting people, making these fantastic human connections that he outwardly rejected. He seemed to have such an impact on so many people, and came to an unfortunate conclusion in the end.

I make myself a promise though – when my kid(s) is grown and self-sufficient, I’m totally going to climb a mountain!

progress report, week of 12/7:

Not much bulk added to the novel this week (a few random lines, a couple good paragraphs). Christmas is starting to happen in a consuming way, hubby is sick… it’s just that time of year.

I did manage to send a story back out into the world again this week, and I wish it luck. I hope I’ve taught it all it needs to know, so that it might stand on its own little feet and prosper. Again, I subbed it to one of my top favorite magazines, lol! If it doesn’t work there, I might try my hand at simultaneous submissions next time. And maybe I’ll cast a bit more modestly, lol! You know, reaching for the stars and all

This week: whatever I can manage, considering it’s the week before Christmas and all. I still like the goal of having part one entirely first-drafted before the new year. It’s still doable, I think.

I’m going to share my first chapter with you all after the new year. (Eeek! I said it!) So I hope you’ll hold me to that

I’m a sucker for a good love story, whether that be romantic or platonic love. I don’t consider myself a romance writer, but I do write a heck of a lot of stories about love, whatever form it might manifest itself in. (And I have a theory, that on a very basic level, all stories come back to love in some form.) They’re hard to write though, without dissolving into a syrupy mess.

It seems in the past weeks the world has been thinking and reflecting on the topic of love in writing, and I’ve been collecting a few of the links I’ve found.

First, an interview @ Maud Newton w/ Marlon James: about his novel, the Book of Night Women (which sounds fascinating, by the way!), and writing about love.

I remember calling friends shouting, “I just wrote a love scene! All they do is kiss!” to which they would respond, “. . . and are they then dismembered?” and I’d go, “No, after that they dance!” It was hard. I resisted it for as long as I could because I didn’t believe in it at first, and even when I did, I couldn’t figure out how to write it. Not until Irish novelist Colum McCann gave me permission by giving me the best writing advice I’ve ever gotten from a writer: Risk Sentimentality.

There’s a belief that sex is the hardest thing for a literary novelist but I disagree: love is. We’re so scared of descending into mush that I think we end up with a just-as-bad opposite, love stories devoid of any emotional quality. But love can work in so many ways without having to resort to that word. Someone once scared me by saying that love isn’t saying “I love you” but calling to say “did you eat?” (And then proceeded to ask me this for the next 6 months). My point being that, in this novel at least, relationships come not through words, but gestures like the overseer wanting to cuddle. Or rubbing his belly and hollering about her cooking, or teaching her how to dance or ride a horse — things reserved for white women…

…I think, as a writer, the important thing was to layer the relationship with complexity and contradiction. There were situations where I could have left certain storylines one-dimensional and gotten away with it. I think the relationship is gripping not because they love each other, or think they do (or not) but because even with such a horribly skewed dynamic, hearts do what they want. And people don’t always fit in the roles that have been assigned to them. But of course the relationship is doomed; any slavery love writes its end in its very beginning.

On a similar tangent, I certainly don’t consider myself an erotica writer either, but I can’t seem to write a story that doesn’t involve or at least elude to sex in some form.

Here, an article on how writing about sex in fiction is almost never really about the sex.

More on writing sex here, from Storytellers Unplugged.

And finally, a must-see movie – film, I guess, we call them films when they’re artsy and thoughtful Good Dick: I suck at writing reviews, and there are plenty of good ones on IMDB, but really, it’s a hilarious, twisted love-story, but at the same time surprisingly sweet. Emotionally taxing, but so worth it! Movie trailer here. (Oh, rated R and not for the kiddies though!) Enjoy!

not a writer:

Just this week I remembered this really twisted and fascinating French film I saw years and years ago, Jeux D’Enfants (Love Me If You Dare). Trailer here.

Remembering this movie makes me want to add some of these kind of mischievous games to Danny and Lexi’s grown-up adventures, because they had a childhood friendship like that, always keeping secrets and getting into trouble together. Just because they grow up, doesn’t mean they have to stop having childish fun. Though I’m sure it wouldn’t be so twisted as this movie (because this movie is really twisted!).

I don’t know why I’m so fond of the childhood friendship to romance story. I certainly never had a childhood boyfriend of any kind. Maybe I’m recalling a past life or something

Question for my writer friends - if you’re already writing a novel, will you still participate in NaNoWriMo somehow, or just go at it as you have been? I was wondering if I might want to commit myself to a word count for November or something.

And then there is this I liked (stolen from scobberlotch)

Vonnegut’s 8 rules for writing fiction:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.