An Unsatisfactory Week Is Still Good
Well, I’m still breathing. I have a new lava lamp, courtesy of the Kiwi. I am listening to Rob Dougan, always soothing. Everyone is healthy–the kids are currently watching one of their favorite shows, a gentle little number involving puppets. It reminds me of Mr. Rogers in scope and pace, but it’s a nice little show. Today they talked about mistakes. How mistakes are okay, and nothing ever got invented without a lot of mistakes, and how trying again when you make a mistake is a good thing.
I, of course, thought of writing. It’s a paradox. The books that seem most full of mistakes, that are one mistake after another, are often the ones I feel proudest of. I remember struggling to stay true to the story, blundering along with no idea of what comes next, trusting the characters…and I feel very proud indeed sometimes that I managed to keep up. It is rather like a marathon.
I’ve finished over twenty novels by now. Each one was different. Quite a few are unpublishable (the first, second, and third ones I wrote, for example; the still-unfinished Keeper and Chosen trilogy) but each taught me something about craft, persistence, patience, and trusting the work. It’s true that each novel doesn’t teach you how to write novels; it only teaches you how to write this particular novel. Still, one learns a great deal, and it’s easier to balance on the circus ball of the next novel once you’ve learned to balance on the first.
Juggling chainsaws, but balance nonetheless.
The old website is still down, but I’ve passed the point of furious tears. I am still trying to get the newsletter working. *sigh* I’d love to be able to tell the Dark Siders what’s going on. I really feel like getting nasty with Yahoo over lost revenue and ad money (you know, us writers have to eat as well) but they’re not going to listen. Why eat away my stomach lining?
Anyway…we watched a couple of good movies yesterday. When the DHM came home I was watching The Eyes of Tammy Faye, about Tammy Faye Bakker. I hadn’t realized that she was one of the only Christian television personalities to accept gay people as actual human beings. I also hadn’t realized that Jerry Falwell had stolen PTL from the Bakkers. Of course, televangelist Christians are a cut-throat bunch, as Pat Boone points out in the documentary. (My feelings on the snakelike nature of most televangelists are well known. It almost makes me want to start the old God & Consequences blog all over again.)
Still, the eyelashes. My God. And the waterworks. *shiver*
Then we watched Play Misty for Me, which I’d never seen before. It was cool to see Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut, and to compare it to later works of his in terms of camera angle and tightness. There’s a bit of fat that could have been trimmed, but it’s otherwise a very respectable effort for a first-time director, and one that certainly presaged well. Though I couldn’t get over how much Jessica Walter looks like Juliette Binoche. (Or is it the other way ’round?)
I had an appointment later in the evening, but it seems we missed each other; so I came home with a bag of groceries. After the kids went to bed, the DHM and I watched Brokeback Mountain (bought from Netflix’s used DVD program, which is a godsend.) It is indeed a beautiful movie that needs to be seen at the very least in widescreen. I had wanted to wait for Movie Nite (with the Selkie and the Boy Scout) for the DHM to see it, but he was very eager to watch it with me right away, and I was touched. I had fun watching him get absorbed in the human story. Funny thing about the Muffin–underneath the American there is definitely the Japanese, but redneck everywhere is the same.
Watching the movie again I couldn’t take my eyes off Michelle Williams. When I saw the movie for the first time, I was still a little taken in by the Dawson’s Creek thing. (Or as I put it in the theater, “Wow. The slutty girl from Dawson’s Creek can actually act. Who knew?”) But this time around, I actually came away more impressed by her performance than by Jake Gyllenhaal’s, which is spectacular in its own right. Williams channeled the rage, betrayal, sadness, and agony of her character with a raw intensity that left me identifying with her every time she was onscreen.
Heath Ledger deserved the bloody Oscar for that film and his tight-lipped portrayal of Ennis Del Mar. I’m still angry over that. He took a character that very easily could have been unsympathetic and turned him into a trainwreck tragedy one cannot avert one’s eyes from, merely because it is inevitable and yet so heartbreaking.
*sigh* That movie just got better with the second viewing. I was kind of afraid it wouldn’t, because it was such a wrenching experience the first time. But it passed the second-state test. Ang Lee’s a bloody genius, and I’m glad I’ve seen a few of his movies and caught his rhythm.
So today will bring more fooling around with the newsletter, trying to get it running. I shifted to PHPList instead of PHPMyList, which solved many of the problems right off the bat. I have a reinstall planned for today, and then we’ll worry about uploading the email addys from the old newsletter.
*sigh* Fun fun fun until daddy takes the T-bird away. Oh, and JeanMarie? You were absolutely right, honey. I just had to walk away from the damn computer. Once I calmed down and came back to it, everything went fine. I was just too upset and was sparking all through the ether. *grin*
Last but not least, a big thank-you to Monk, who got the new blog up and working. If not for him I’d still be beating my head against the wall in despair.
Happy Friday, Readers!
