2014

I was just reading back through some of my old posts from last year, and remembered this post about all of the things I wanted to accomplish in 2013.

The one thing on my list that I absolutely wanted to do was the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, which I did with my mom and sisters in September. I also wanted to take a class, and I took several last year including pottery, chocolate making and a blog design course online.

I did work on my spanish a bit more than I previously had, but not nearly as much as I wanted to, so that will have to stay on the list for this year. I did, however, learn to make pico de gallo, and it was friggin' delicious.

My other goal for 2014 was to eat more adventurously. It was a pretty broad goal, that could mean almost anything really. I did eat fish a few times, I even made it myself at home once, generally though, I'm going to have to call that one a fail.

For 2014, I would like to:

1. Work on my Spanish. For real this time.

2. Travel. I have some really big plans for 2014, they aren't ready for sharing yet but it's going to be a very exciting year.

3. Volunteer. I've volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, Foster a Dream and a couple of other charities a few times, but I'd like to do it a lot more. It's fun, it makes you feel good, and it helps someone else, so there is really no downside.

4. Get wedding dress pictures done. I've been wanting to get some cool, artistic photos taken of me in my wedding dress ever since the wedding (so a year and a half now) but I keep putting it off.

5. Finish a novel. I've been working on writing a novel for a few years now, I actually have two going because I kept switching back on the plot in completely opposite ways to the point where it was really two totally different stories. I've been scared to talk about it or tell anyone about it but I've decided that maybe posting about it will give me the push I need to finally finish. I don't even care if it's never seen or read by another living soul, I just want to know that I was able to do it.

6. Experiment artistically. It is entirely possible that I have no artistic talent whatsoever, but in the last year I've started playing around with painting and pottery, and even though nothing I have made so far will never been seen by anyone (except my lovely husband who adores all of my experimental endeavours. Probably.) I think that the attempt can be just as important as the outcome. Plus, it's fun.

7. Photograph things. I bought myself a really nice camera last year for Christmas, and even though I absolutely love it, and just the fact that I use it instead of the old battered point and shoot that I used to take all my pictures with has improved my photographs exponentially, I still don't really know how to use it. There are tons of cheap photography classes around, and even free meet ups where you can learn about photography, so there is really no excuse, except for possibly that the entire series of Friends is on Netflix and I can't leave the house or shower until I finish watching it.

It's probably unlikely that I'll be able to do all of these things as well as I'd like to be able to, but it's important to set goals for yourself, even if it's only so you can see how much farther you still have to go.

 

 

may I quote you on that?

A few things that have been stuck in my head lately:

"Film noir gave us a term for the low-maintenance cheap-date type of woman, as personified by Ingrid Bergman and the other cool blondes. They were, in the gruff parlance, Class Acts. A Class Act does not bombard you with whimpering phone calls to the effect of why are you out with your mates watching the footie when you could be choosing sisal floor mats with me?

A Class Act does not take a split badly, or if she does, does so without so much as a peep. A Class Act is the silhouette disappearing into the night that you will no doubt remember-but will never talk to again. A Class Act will spend a lot of time alone, drinking spirits. A Class Act will never emerge from a local church in a shower of petals. A Class Act will never be a mummy, yummy or otherwise.

A Class Act will never have a husband who visit prostitutes. Forget I mentioned it."- Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Love that book.

"Summer left and no one said a word."- Matt Nathanson

"You are arguing that the fragile and rare thing is beautiful just because it's fragile and rare. But that's a lie, and you know it."- The Fault in Our Stars

"Fuck that, I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong ... I will never apologize. I stand here and I'm amazing for you, not because of you. I am not who I sleep with ... I am not my weight. I am myself."- Amy Schumer

“There is something absolutely divine — I mean, literally, the breath of God — in the ability to put someone else in your heart, to think of them first. But from the time of the greatest pornographer who ever lived, Shakespeare, we’ve demanded that love be something more. No, fuck Shakespeare — since the Song of Songs! And what happens is, the utter grandeur and magnificence of what love actually is gets overshadowed by this disappointment that it’s not the way we fantasized it should be.”- Jim, 55

pixar's 22 rules of storytelling

Here are the 22 rules of storytelling, according to Pixar story artist Emma Coates. I like numbers 2 and 11.

1. You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
2. You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.
3. Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
4. Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
5. Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
6. What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
7. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
8. Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
9. When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
10. Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
11. Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
12. Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
13. Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
14. Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
15. If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
16. What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
17. No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
18. You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
19. Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
20. Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
21. You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
22. What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

 Link here.

behave.

Love this.

unphotographable

In the world we live in, there are pictures everywhere, of everything, taken by everyone. It is estimated that there have been about 3.8 trillion pictures taken, ever.

In the world we live in today, if you don't have a picture, it didn't happen. But sometimes, for whatever reason, you can't take a picture. Maybe your phone is dead, maybe you don't have a camera, maybe it's an inappropriate time to take pictures, or maybe, for whatever reason, taking a picture of a moment might put you in danger in some way.

So I was delighted to come across this site a few weeks ago, unphotographable. The creator of the website, Michael David Murphy, posts short descriptions of scenes that were for one reason or another, unphotographable, but were still important enough that somebody would like to remember them.

Some of the posts are so detailed and descriptive that you can actually watch the scene unfold in your head. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then maybe a thousand words is just as good as a picture.

Here are some examples:

"This is a picture I did not take of a woman with a baby in her arms and a burping towel on her shoulder, walking up to the side of a vacant, foreclosed home in the middle of a neighborhood hit hard by mortgage fraud, looking up and down the street before turning-on the outdoor spigot at the corner of the house to take a drink with a cupped hand, and then, after wetting the towel, she began to carefully wash her newborn's feet."

"This is a picture I did not take of a man in Atlanta wearing a yellow Martin Luther King "I Have a Dream" t-shirt while selling drugs beneath the freeway, half a mile down the street from the house where Dr. King was born."

six word memoirs

"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter"- Blaise Pascal.

It is actually much harder to write something in a few words, than it is if you are given all the words in the world. If you only have a few words, each one is that much more important, because there is a lot more room for misunderstanding or misconstrual.

A few months ago, I read Not Quite What I Was Planning, a collection of 6 words memoirs inspired by Ernest Hemingway's "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn." I think back to it every so often, trying to decide what my 6 word memoir would say, but it's very hard to commit to something like that, it feels so final.

Although, really, your 6 word memoir would just be a snapshot of that time in your life, and would change in the future certainly, and could change almost as soon as it was written, because even if your experiences haven't changed, your perspective might have.

So as of right now, this minute, my six word memoir is: Learn, travel, try; always missing something.

See more 6 word memoirs at Smith Magazine.com- Six word memoirs.

Check out true stories told in one sentence here.

Language is a virus

From Language is a Virus, writing exercise of the day:

Compose a list of familiar phrases, or phrases that have stayed in your mind for a long time--from songs, from poems, from conversation.

Here is my list, and how long they've been hanging out in my head.

1. She was just a really good artist, painting pretty pictures inside my head- my friend Tanner, 6 years ago

2. The Sharks? You mean, like Shark Week?- my friend Amanda, last week

3. Either build your dream, or someone will hire you to build theirs- quote, yesterday

4. Fear of heights is really only fear of self, you don't trust yourself not to jump- White Oleander, 10 years ago

5. Me: Would you marry me with this on my head? Derek: I'd marry you with anything on your head- 10 months ago

6. You think I need love? Honey, men need to be loved. Women, women need to be wanted.- Gemma Teller, SOA, 4 months ago

7. She had a weakness for writers and I, well I was never that good with words anyway- Lucero- 4 years ago

This site has tons of really neat writing exercises, to help with writer's block, or just for fun.