Hay y’all. I have been feeling the need to type informally lately and call everyone “ya.” Perhaps it’s the changing seasons.
Anyway, I have posted another article on Examiner— http://tinyurl.com/deb29z —about the things you need in order to make your own movie for free. Enjoy! Also, go make some movies thank you.
New article up at http://tinyurl.com/c2bwa6 about a French film festival happening at the Colorado Film Festival.
I have some lovely food poisoning—be careful what you put in your mouth, kiddes—and the fire station across the street is doing major construction with jackhammers, so I am in a lovely mood.
I like writing these articles so far. It’s fun to just play around on the keyboard and then get paid money for them. Not that I’m not putting effort into them, but… still.
I think it’s going to be hard for me to not go all Dorothy Parker “The only “ism” Hollywood believes in is plagiarism” on everyone. Maybe it would be good?
Wow, it’s been a while. I really have no excuse. On the up side, I have published my first Examiner article. It’s short and sweet, so go check it and tell me what you think!
I really enjoyed Christmas. It’s always a strange thing for me.
I liked sipping champagne while playing Battleship with my cousin. I liked gathering with Buddhists and Atheists for a Christian holiday. I liked eating traditional American fare in a Chinese household.
I found it interesting that the holidays are a time to gather with your friends and family, and yet I was gathered with someole else’s friends and family. The vast majority of people I like and love were not there. It’s ok, but I still found it strange.
In terms of gifts, suffice to say that I have enough fine chocolates to last me the next two centuries. I am not complaining!
I hope everyone had/is having a wonderful holiday season, and I hope you all got to spend time with the people you love.
For your entertainment: here is a list of writers who never attended college/dropped out:
Ray Bradbury
Noel Coward
William Faulkner
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Robert Frost
Jack London
George Orwell
William Saroyan
William Shakespeare
George Bernard Shaw
Leo Tolstoy
Mark Twain
Walt Whitman
Emile Zola
(more here)
I have been taking a break from writing because the majority of my away-at-college friends have come back to town for the winter holidays. It’s wonderful to see them again.
I’ve realized, in thinking about my friends, that there is a myth about going to college. Almost everyone says how wonderful it is—that they met their best friends there and grew so much as people. They think this way after the fact; they forget that it wasn’t all sunshine and peaches.
Of course, life is very messy. I actually hate college. There are definitely good things about it. Mainly: being able to say you went to college. Also, learning to deal with ridiculous bureaucracies. Otherwise, one pays to be forced to do things he or she doesn’t want to do.
Sometimes there is sunshine, and sometimes there are peaches, but often there is loneliness, regret, and self-doubt. Nearly everyone I know is confronting issues they denied for so many years.
This is healthy, of course, and I’m very glad and proud that my friends are being smart and working on their issues.
I do, however, long for that magical college experience where I meet amazing, compassionate people and learn things about the subjects we’re supposedly studying in class. I wish my friends could be happy and have the magical experience, too.
Yes, we’ve very privileged to be able to have an education, but please forgive me if I am a little disappointed that it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.
There are a decent amount of drunk people who wander Denver at night, even when it’s cold. It makes for some interesting times.
As I was pulling up to a Hamburger Stand ordering speaker box the other day, a drunk guy walked in front of me, up to the box. He stood there, slurring, “Hello??” at the thing for a while. When they didn’t respond, he turned around, put his butt near the speaker, and made a farting sound with his mouth. At that point his friend persuaded him to get out of our way.
Tonight my boyfriend and I went to a 24-hour Starbucks at around 1am. It was a smallish one, but it was pretty packed. This drunk guy came in and immediately began yelling priceless one-liners. Examples:
“Because eating hamburgers is delicious, but not eating anything is not.”
To his female companion: “Those jeans make you look really fat.”
About Barack Obama: “Go back to *bleeping* Africa.”
“If you got some Viagra, I bet you could keep it up.”
I don’t think he actually believed any of the offensive things he was saying, but was just having fun torturing the non-drunk people he was with. It was actually pretty funny, but in a rather sad way.
I don’t want to be that guy, but it’s ok with me if he does.
How long have you had DSL?
Think about it for a second. Think about all of those months and years you’ve spent enjoying the ability to waste your life on Youtube and free porn websites. Those were good years, yes?
Now think about little ol’ me sitting solemnly at home, combating with dial-up and the inability to listen to songs on myspace. A sadder story has never been told.
But, lo, dear reader, you may now wipe those tears from your eyes and leap up in joy, for I have finally ascended to the level of DSL-having, contributing member of society! O, heaven surely cannot be more beautiful than this.
What this means to you:
1) I will be less cranky and frustrated
2) I will be online more, which will probably lead to more blog, or at least more informed blog, or at least more links to youtube
3) I am ever closer to posting pictures of my cat+bacon
In summation: Woot.
I like losing myself in my stories. It’s the best part. I can lose myself in someone else’s work, but I like creating my own because then I have unlimited power. I say what goes next, I say what happens next, and I say who gets a say. It’s nice.
Editing, however, is difficult. It’s hard to tear myself away from the feelings of joy and accomplishment I get from finishing a piece, although this is necessary for objectively viewing its merits and pitfalls.
I also feel estranged from the elements of a story. Inciting incidents, rising action, climax—it all seems faraway and theoretical to me. I’m starting to understand the necessity of using these ideas in editing, but I’m very much out of practice.
I’m also starting to realize that a normal first draft will most likely fail at one or more of these things. It doesn’t mean I have failed. It just means that I am an actual person doing actual work.
This is a very comforting thought to me, and I’m starting to find the confidence to be absolutely brutal with my manuscripts. Once I can accept that it’s not perfect I can make it better.
So the warm cozies didn’t really work out. First of all, we didn’t get much snow, and the snow we did get just made the roads really slick and treacherous.
Second of all, I forgot that I had plans to go to brunch at the Brown Palace for my mother’s birthday. We had a lot of fun (and a lot of food!), but I did not get an ounce of work done. Which I am okay with.
Third of all, I didn’t have any hot chocolate or any warm blanket time. I have no excuse for this one, except to say that I just wasn’t feeling it.
I had a nice break from writing today. It made me realize that I’ve been so wrapped up in my goals that I haven’t been paying much attention to anything else. It’s very easy for me to be so completely obsessed with something that I forget that there is an outside world.
This realization does not necessarily mean that I’m going to totally fix this, however. I feel like I need to be obsessed for a while because 1)it’s fun and 2)I’m getting a lot of work done.
I am going to pay more attention to my loved ones, but not at the expense of my work. And vice versa. And I’m definitely going to give myself some warm blanket time.
