Lilith Saintcrow

I am officially crazy.

Why? Because I’m trying to get five thousand words a day out of my head–two on the NaNoWriMo book and three on the Valentine book since the deadline’s been moved up. (I know you’re curious. Please, as you love me, don’t ask.) My brain has turned into that particular type of putty you only find in your cereal bowl after it’s had a long time to get good and soggy.

The DHM jokes that I’m like angular ball bearings–there’s a bit of chatter unless it’s preloaded, which means I function best with a certain amount of pressure. Ramping up to that preloading is an interesting psychological process for me; when it’s finished, I’ll take off like a rocket into the stories in my head. Then it will be pizza time–because that’s the only food that slides under the door of the space where I’m in. Because it’s flat.

Ha ha. That’s a DHM joke too. You get the idea that the man is pretty funny. Like I told the Sullen Teenager when he flinched (I had just made some remark about Robin Williams being ultra-hawt), “Chicks dig guys who make them laugh. Like, we really dig them.”

He didn’t get it. But the DHM does. It’s part of why I stopped dating bad boys and pretty boys and started dating geeks. As the Selkie says, geeks try harder.

Anyway, digression. There’s a certain amount of pressure that, unless I’m under it, I’m just not comfortable. I get the bends. When the situation changes and I suddenly have a load of work land in my lap, it becomes necessary to undergo this compression. Not comfortable, but necessary. And comforting, if not comfortable.

So I’m listening to Blue October’s Hate Me (off the Foiled album) over and over again. I heard it in the car on the way home from taking the Sullen Teenager to school, and had to REMEMBER THOSE LYRICS because of course, the radio didn’t tell me who it was. (Dammit.) For some reason the song is feeding my Muse like nobody’s business. Especially since both Dante and Dru (the YA heroine) are in a Very Angsty Place.

What about the rest of the album, you ask? I don’t know yet. The Teenager might like it. For now I just like the one song. Maybe I’ll branch out into the rest of it while I’m writing today.

Oatmeal brain. I just hope there’s enough lumps in there to feed the ravenous work.

Every once in a while, something extraordinary happens and instead of doing a Thursday Revue, I do a review on whatever ding-dang day it happens to be. Because, well, this is my blog. I can do that sort of thing.

This weekend I went to go see Harsh Times because I love me some Christian Bale. Unfortunately the movie was Beavis and Butthead with guns, and we didn’t stay to see all of it. It was terrible. (I just CANNOT imagine sharp, handsome Bale saying “Dude!” all the time.) Which says something, considering I paid seven bucks EACH for a ticket. It was money ill-spent.

So I was nervous when buying the tickets for Stranger than Fiction. It was, after all, Will Ferrell. And my movie karma might have taken a drastic turn for the worse. But…it’s about a writer who has to kill a character, only the character is a real man–and he’s hearing the writer narrate.

This, I thought, would be right up my alley. And the Surly Teenager actually begged to be taken to a movie with no car chases, explosions, or nudity. Surely the End Times were upon us, and I needed to get this movie seen before the Apocalypse.

But still. Will Ferrell? The only thing more annoying than the man is his movies, and the only thing more annoying than that are his talentless SNL sketches. (I happen to think SNL was great until Eddie Murphy left. Then it all went downhill.) Anyway, I had my fingers crossed and my toes crossed too, hoping for a miracle.

I was not just served a miracle. I was served a mind-blowingly fantastic miracle.

(more…)

At least someone has told me what’s wrong with it, which is the first step toward fixing it. *evil glint in eye* I love tweaking conventions.

I am up early, mostly because the DHM likes to say “goodbye” before he goes for the day. Which is nice. But the Little Prince waits until the DHM is safely out the door…and then demands breakfast. With a sleepy smile and much blinking of his big brown eyes. He’s four years old and already a terror with the ladies. I console myself with thoughts of eventually embarrassing him once he starts bringing dates home.

The Princess is still sleeping soundly. It takes a land mine to get her out of bed once she’s down. Happily enough, the Surly Teenager is at a friend’s house, so I have some time and space today with just two rugrats to wrangle while I write. (I have this mad vision of crouching a-horseback while wrangling toddlers. Whistling “Whistle While You Work”, no less.)

Last night I went out for dinner with Sixton. Afterward we repaired to Casa Saintcrow and watched Dial M for Murder and High Noon. I love me some Hitchcock, and I love me some Gary Cooper even more. Funny thing–Grace Kelly was in both movies, looking pretty but wooden, and the same guy did the music for each one.

High Noon is particularly interesting, because it was intended as an allegory for the McCarthy era. But anyone who has ever been abandoned by their friends–or even been afraid such a thing will happen–can identify with Cooper’s character in the movie. In terms of cinemetography and editing it was superlative. I’m getting to the point where I start to recognize directors’ styles, noting the placement of the camera and the choices made about where actors/set pieces should be in space. Oddly enough, this is easier in older movies, where the choices are so deliberate; with the advent of CGI and stuff I’m noticing that less and less care is taken with subtle placement to make a point. Instead, the computer animation makes the point.

Then again, I’m not a critic, just a consumer of celluloid. (Do they even shoot film on celluloid anymore?) And I do tend to look at movies from a writer’s point of view, which means certain details escape me while others loom large.

I plan on trying Psycho and The Omen next. Mostly because I’ve never seen the former, and the latter has been mentioned to me four times by four separate people in the past week. I can take a hint.

No, really, I can. Which means I’m off to tweak that story, to make everything shiny and better. Thank goodness I have about 2K words to do it in.

Here’s the pics from last night:

Slideshow of last night’s offerings.

Enjoy.

First, a slight philosophical question. Why is it that every time I find something I like to do, my life conspires against me ever doing it?

Just asking.

On to other things. Recently I’ve been thinking about attempts. Going out taking photos at night (after tango class last night I was exhausted and truly meant to go home, but after a couple of shots I just HAD to get the rest of the night in) has taught me not very much other than people look at you oddly when you’re out late at night (especially Officers of the Law, who eye my camera with as much suspicion as my nose ring sometimes but are perfectly willing to let me go my merry way when I smile and explain I’m a writer too) and…sometimes the first attempt is the best.

Sometimes it isn’t. You can never tell.

I tend to take four or five shots of something that catches my eye, framing and editing as I go. I can tell when I’ve caught something usable, mostly. But a funny thing happens between taking the shot and opening it on my monitor to look at it. (Yes, I use digital. Getting me and chemicals together in a darkroom is a recipe for Titanic-sized disaster.)

Focus weaves in and out. The lighting turns wonky. Effects I had planned for show up alongside effects that I have no frockin’ clue about. Out of, let’s say, five shots, one might be usable and satisfying–about thirty percent of the time.

You’re beginning to understand why I deal in volume. Writing is sort of like that.

Sometimes the first run I take at a story falls flat. Sometimes I have to go back months later and tweak it. Very rarely does the bat connect sweetly with the ball, sending a crack through the park, and I know I’ve hit a home run. Funny thing, though–the more I produce, the more I get to hear that crack. It doesn’t happen often but it happens a consistent percentage of the time. So really, getting a good picture or hitting a home run in a story is all about the attempts–the percentage of times you’re going to hit one out of the park doesn’t increase very much. But the home runs you get if you’re actively swinging every day will surprise you.

Call out the men in the white coats. I just made a sports metaphor.

Your mileage will vary, of course. But, as Christopher Hyatt once remarked, playing the piano every day for ten years won’t make you Van Cliburn. It will make you a pretty damn good piano player, perhaps the best one in a ten-mile radius. That’s worth something.

Someone at a writer’s mixer once commented that she had to write “when the mood takes me, I sometimes wait for weeks.” I almost choked on my glass of red wine and quickly excused myself. If you have to wait for a mood you’re probably not going to get published. The key is to produce enough work to up the statistical chances that someone, somewhere, will like something you’ve done enough to buy it. Incidentally, this will also start you bumbling on the road to learning what works and what doesn’t, on the page–which I call “craft.” You’ll clean out the sludge in the moonshine taps so you can start distilling some awesome rotgut.

I’ll have the shots from last night up soon on Flickr. Then you can see for yourself–some of the series actually turned out well. Just remember that for every good photo there’s about twenty that were not so good or outright horrible. And remember that for every story that comes out sweet, clean, and aching to be read, there are at lease five ugly malformed ones–and even if they are ugly, they still serve a purpose. They’re still exercise, and they might be usable later. (But that’s another blog post.)

Just keep swinging that bat. It is all about how many times you try.