10 Movies, 2 Days, Or Bust.

Perhaps you already figured this out, but I'm not really the traditions kind of girl. Maybe it was my love of pink Christmas trees gave me away... You won't catch me having a church wedding, baking apple pie, or watching professional baseball anytime soon (unless, of course, I go TO the stadium and there's a large cup of beer involved, but that's a different story..,).

You see, traditions sort of irk me off. Like a little kid who's told they have to do something certain way just because, it only makes me want to do exactly the opposite of what is expected. Apparently, I never really grew out of this phase (stop laughing, Sis), though I don't really see that as a bad thing.

One tradition I do love? The AMC Best Picture Showcase. All Oscar Nominated Best Picture films shown back to back to back to back-- you get the idea. This year things are a little different. Instead of one day and 5 films, there are actually 10 Best Pic Noms for 2010 so the films will be split on shown over two consecutive Saturdays (Feb 27th, March 6th).

If you LOVE movies, Hollywood hype, and the Oscar ceremonies I HIGHLY recommend you join me in the one tradition I am more than willing to adhere to. The best part is after you and you friends all sit on your asses for hours on end watching the 10 Best Pic Noms, you can hold your very own Oscar party and complete with ballots and prizes. You know you want to!

Hear that? Silence.

That's right, I've been decidedly quiet and that's because I've been plotting...

Pinky: What're we going to do today, Brain?

Brain: Same thing we do every day, Pinky... try to take over the world!

Today, I saw a post from Katie over at Plot This about an awesome plotting technique on Cynthis Jayne Omololu's blog (author or Dirty Little Secrets). It's called "9 Steps for Plotting Fiction (Taken from the Verla Kay Message Boards)".

Dude, this is the most amazing thing ever. It's so stupid, simple that it's brilliant. The chart is made up of 9 squares that encompass conflict, scenes, characterization, exposition and more. The squares interconnect and really help to demonstrate the relationship between each phase of your story. This is the writing equivalent to the Quadratic Equation, here folks (or some other important equation. That's the best my I-failed-Math-twice brain could come up with). You literally plug the facts into the formula and come out with a completely plotted novel. Genius!

It's helped me to see that I'd already figured out a lot of things than I realized on my Epic Fantasy WIP, as well as, making it glaringly obvious exactly what bits are still tripping me up. And you know what, for the first time in a long time this thing doesn't feel so insurmountable.

Wherein I steal other people's posts and call them my own.*

Yeah, I'm a stealer. I'll admit it. As a kid it was grapes at the grocery store or my mom's bic razor (she wouldn't let me shave until I was in 6th grade. 6TH GRADE, people! I had to sneak around with razors in my pockets and nicks on my knees for years. Did I mention we lived in FL? The sunshine state! Land of swimming pools, bathing suits, and bare legs! Hmmm? I never fully recovered (as you can see). Oh, and now I choose not to shave more often then not. Loveable.)**

Then there was the time my brother and I, also very strategically unwrapped and rewrapped our Christmas gifts while our parents were out, all the while feeding M&M's to our little sister to buy her silence. She told anyway. Traitor. Not stealing in the strictest sense, but I make the rules here.***

So in the spirit of stealing (Yay!), I'm going to link you to a couple of of hilarious posts and collect all of the glory for myself (not).

• Lisa and Laura have done it again: "In Pursuit of the Trivial." Watch the vlog as Lisa attempts to lay the Trivial smack down and only manages to term her own coin. As a side note, I scored a big fat zero. So, you know, awesome. Thanks, LiLa.

• And this one is for the Ladies (this sites for the grown-ups, kids-- be warned): "An open letter to husbands and boyfriends about the guys we (surprisingly) DO and DON’T want to have sex with." The reasoning behind each pick is hilarious. I got this one from a Diablo Cody (Juno) tweet. Clearly, she doesn't read this blog, but we'll thank her anyway.

*Has anyone read Libba Bray's "Going Bovine"? Don't you dig the chapter titles?

**Did you see that crazy long parenthetical aside and the parenthesis inside the parenthesis? I'm sure this break about a thousand rules, but that's not important. Not scarring your children for life, now that's important.

***My mom told us years later that she always knew we'd peeked. She figured if we wanted to ruin our Christmas it was our own decision. My sister? She just got free M&M's. What a whore.

Booklust

I want to read:

BLOODROOT by Amy Greene

Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies—of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss—that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.

The novel is told in a kaleidoscope of seamlessly woven voices and centers around an incendiary romance that consumes everyone in its path: Myra Lamb, a wild young girl with mysterious, haint blue eyes who grows up on remote Bloodroot Mountain; her grandmother Byrdie Lamb, who protects Myra fiercely and passes down “the touch” that bewitches people and animals alike; the neighbor boy who longs for Myra yet is destined never to have her; the twin children Myra is forced to abandon but who never forget their mother’s deep love; and John Odom, the man who tries to tame Myra and meets with shocking, violent disaster. Against the backdrop of a beautiful but often unforgiving country, these lives come together—only to be torn apart—as a dark, riveting mystery unfolds.

With grace and unflinching verisimilitude, Amy Greene brings her native Appalachia—and the faith and fury of its people—to rich and vivid life. Here is a spellbinding tour de force that announces a dazzlingly fresh, natural-born storyteller in our midst. (Summary from Goodreads)

ALICE I HAVE BEEN by Melanie Benjamin

Alice Liddell Hargreaves’s life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she’s experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only “Alice.” Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year–the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories.

That story, a wild tale of rabbits, queens, and a precocious young child, becomes a sensation the world over. Its author, a shy, stuttering Oxford professor, does more than immortalize Alice–he changes her life forever. But even he cannot stop time, as much as he might like to. And as Alice’s childhood slips away, a peacetime of glittering balls and royal romances gives way to the urgent tide of war.

For Alice, the stakes could not be higher, for she is the mother of three grown sons, soldiers all. Yet even as she stands to lose everything she treasures, one part of her will always be the determined, undaunted Alice of the story, who discovered that life beyond the rabbit hole was an astonishing journey.

A love story and a literary mystery, Alice I Have Been brilliantly blends fact and fiction to capture the passionate spirit of a woman who was truly worthy of her fictional alter ego, in a world as captivating as the Wonderland only she could inspire. (Summary from Goodreads)

Thanks to Entertainment Weekly for providing those recommendations... What book have you been stalking like that cure boy (or girl) you went to college with?

Is "Creative Freedom" A Four Letter Word?

Do you hear the word creative freedom and cringe? Have you ever found yourself crouched in a small, dark room rocking back-and-forth chanting, "guidelines, rules, guidelines, rules?" Do you wish your mother were around to tell you WHAT TO DO (and you're over the age of 18)? If you answered yes to one (or more - me) of these questions then it's possible you're scared of find the notion of limitless possibilities to be a little intimidating. Confession: it scares the shit out of me.

Now that I am done with graduate school submissions, my creative landscape is WIDE OPEN. I don't have a GPS, or a friend, or an enchanted garden gnome (see Current Reading is sidebar) telling me what to write and how to write it. I'm all alone -- supposedly writing is a lonely profession, or so I've been told. I know, shocking. I have a few WIPs to contend with-- one of which served as my grad submission and the other of which is an idea of EPIC proportions and needs much more time to ferment and cultivate in my mind. So while I'm involved in the "gestation period" (sorry to all of the visual readers out there *gag*), how am I to get the proverbial creative juices flowing? How can I slay my fear of the unknown and replace it with unabashed curiosity and enthusiasm?

Lately, I've been working on ways to harness that Creative Freedom and bring the fun back (sort of like bringing sexy back, but PG-er). Laini Taylor, author of Lips Touch and the Dreamdark series, blogged recently about her renewed journaling and sketching efforts and I found myself uber jealous of her deliciously colorful and whimsical sketches. When I was a kid, I was very much into art. I would color, draw, paint, design clothes, etc. all of the time. As I grew older and started to focus more on other creative endeavors my artistic prowess sort of dwindled and as an adult I've grown pretty critical of my abilities. Inspired by Laini, I started looking into creative journaling (Google Images) and found some really inspiring pictures and sites to help prod me along. I may not be the best artist, but there are a lot of ways to get the same effect without a practiced hand: collaging with magazine and newspaper images, choosing lyrics or poems you love, or perhaps simply a single image that inspires you...

My point (I think I had one)? We all are paralyzed by fear every now and then, but the real question is how do we combat that fear? The way I see it, you have two choices. You can either be paralyzed by your fear and never progress anywhere, or, you can use that fear as motivation to learn, to grow, and to succeed. While I am most certainly a work-in-progress when it comes to conquering my fears, it feels like for the first time (maybe ever) I am really beginning to see past it. What you, and I, need to remember is that acknowledging your fear doesn't eliminate obstacles (nothing that's worth it was ever easy, or so the saying goes). There will always be mountains to climb (thank you, Miley), but standing tall and believing you can surpass them is the first step towards success.

SNL

I didn't get to catch all of SNL this weekend with Jon Hamm, but I kept reading Tweets and FB updates about the 'Closet Organizer' sketch. Thanks to LiLa for posting it. I am still laughing hysterically.



Go over to LiLa's blog for another hilarious sketch with Jon Hamm and Michael Buble too... Champagne with chunks of meat, mmm.

Introducing Team JoBama

Is it just me, or is it completely ironic that Steve Jobs unleashed the iPad (marketing team fail) on the same day that President Obama addressed a large crowd of somewhat dower senators (and Americans) with the State of the Union? Okay, maybe not ironic necessarily, but damn funny. Jobs and team Apple seem to have missed the first day of Marketing 101: Picking a Product Name, and Obama could really benefit from a little common ground between political parties. Perhaps they could team up... Welcome Team JoBama.

In my head, it would go a little something like this:

**Scene: Pre-unveiling/State of the Union strategy session.**

President Obama (PO): Hey Steve *flashes pearly white grin*

Steve Jobs (SJ): What up, B.O.? (that's what all his buddies call him. Childhood nicknames always suck, even for future presidents).

PO: Why Steve, what do you have there?

SJ: Oh, just a giant iPhone I've been working on all night in my secret lair.

PO: Intriguing *brushes imaginary goatee*-- What does it do?

SJ: Oh you know, pretty much the same thing as the iPhone, only bigger and betterer *pops collar of Izod shirt, brushes shoulder off.*

PO: *eyes wide* Can I see it?

SJ: Sure, but be very careful. This is the only prototype I have and everyone's been making all of this fuss and the Kindle DX is already in mass production! *pause* Mwahahaha, the Kindle... hahaha. *pours glowing liquid into seemingly empty beaker. watches smoke rise, grinning deviously.*

PO: Hey, can I get on the internet here? I want to look up a leaked copy of my speech, get in a little practice time before the big show.

SJ: Sure thing, all you have to do is touch the iPad screen and--

PO: The what?!?

SJ: The iPad.

PO: *laughs uncontrollably, falling on floor and shaking feet in the air like a bug*

SJ: What are you laughing at, B.O.?

PO: Does it get kind of bitchy and super emotional once a month? *snickers* Does it have wings, for her protection? *snickers*

SJ: But it is a pad. You know, like a pad of paper. Besides it's not like your don't have your own problems. No one in the Senate seems to be talking to each other. At least Apple brings people together. *huffs*

PO: Whatever, Jobs. That name is wrong in SO many was, but you do have a point. How about I help you come up with a new name - I do know a thing or two about branding - and you give me the first round of prototypes to butter up the senate floor. *grins triumphantly*

SJ: Fine. *shakes hand*

PO: Alright, how about iPromise? A clear reference to it's world dominating potential.

SJ: No.

PO: iChange?

SJ: No, get your head out of your ass, Obama.

PO: *bristles* iMedia, iNote, iPhat, iDominate, iBrainWash, iMazing, iDon'tNeedThisCauseIAlreadyHaveAniPhoneandiMac....

SJ: *glares. eyes smoking beaker*

**End Scene: Fades to black**

If only....