Days 578 to 583 - What it takes to make me cry

I appreciate authors who can make me feel. I think it's a wonderful thing when I find myself falling in love with people who have never existed, or hating someone who entirely consists of words on a page. But, seriously, WHY do so many authors at the moment feel it is their duty to make me sob?

The King of Making Me Miserable at the moment is George RR Martin. I started reading the books because they were, without exception, the best written fantasy I have ever seen. His characters are strong, vibrant... and constantly dying. It is really not a spoiler to say that most of what happens is a series of terrible misfortunes creating wave after wave of unrelenting misery. I started watching the series recently with my husband, who hasn't read the books, and he's had to tell me off for giving unintentional spoilers just by sighing sadly at certain lines. I want to keep reading the books but there's only so much sad I can bear before I start getting desperate for some light, uncomplicated romance that doesn't kick the character's favourite dog (or dire wolf) when they're down.

"There's nothing that says all endings have to be happy ones!"
I know. And I don't expect every book to wrap everything up with a neat little bow. Some things (Hunger Games, I'm looking at you) are too broken for a chirpy "and they lived happily ever after" to be satisfying. But as Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, sometimes people get so caught up in IF they can do something they don't stop to think about whether they should. Yes, you can totally ruin the life of absolutely every sympathetic character in your book. You can make me cry. But do you have to? Is it integral to the plot? Do you have a reason, or are you just showing off how well you can prod my tear ducts?

When I was younger I went and saw the movie AI. It was a dark envisioning of the Pinocchio story staring Haley Joel Osment. I started crying about 5 minutes in and didn't stop until after I left the cinema, but I hated that film with a passion. Because it had made me cry on purpose, just to show it could. It pressed any emotional button it could get it's fingers on just to evoke a response. The whole thing felt cold, clinical. "Let's measure exactly how many tears we can jerk out the audience."

I don't mind if you make me cry. I WANT you to make me cry, and laugh, and love, and despise, and sometimes even despair.
But only as long as you're doing it for the right reasons.
You'd better have a damn good reason, Martin.

Word count - 1,147

Days 573 to 577 - Hunger Games Blues

I saw the Hunger Games last week and loved the movie so much I immediately bought all three books, which I then loved so much I read them over the course of the weekend.

The first book was very much like the film, and I am really confused as to how they are going to go from the immediate action of the reaping and the Hunger Games to the more political-based intrigue premise of the second book's opening.

And I don't want to put in too many spoilers, but the climax of the third book made me cry for about 30 minutes.

I've read a lot of comments about Katniss, questioning whether she's a strong feminist hero but I think at the end of the day it doesn't matter. Personally I feel she is a strong character. Would I want me daughters to be like her? God no. Given a choice I want my children to be psychologically healthy, thank you very much. But if I have daughters I definitely want them to have the strength of will to face the impossible odd and heart-rending tragedies she does without breaking down. Katniss' charm isn't the way she personifies an entire generation of women, it's the sheer marvel of her tenacity and will to live, no matter how bad life gets.

But now there are no more books left. It's something I will just have to cope with.

My coping will probably involve less animal cruelty than Katniss would use.

Word count - 1,655

Days 340 - 572 AWOL no longer

You know how sometimes you'll be all like "I should totally do the washing up" but then something comes up and you decide it can wait till tomorrow, because it's just one day and what can it really hurt after all and then before you know it cockroaches have taken over your entire living space and are charging you rent? 

No, just me?

Well, guess what, you sneaky little roaches, I'm back in the metaphorical kitchen now with my washing up gloves on! And no, you can't claim anti-pesticide medication as a tax write-off. 

Word count - 1, 585

Days 320 to 339 - A Plague on Both my Houses

I'm sick. My son is sick. My husband is sick.

The cat is the only one enjoying herself, because we all have too little energy to push her off our laps now. So while my men sniffle with their colds, and I clutch my three-week old migraine, she purrs away in contentment and kneads my knee with her uber-sharp claws, ignoring my weak protestations.

But honestly - what kind of headache goes on for three weeks?!? I've never had a migraine before. This one started with a bang. I got a massive head pain, then when I went to tell my husband all that came out was a random string of noise. That was one of the most bizarre moments of my life. It looked a lot like this:



Like me, she didn't have a stroke. But presumably, like me, poor Serene Branson had to have a CT scan and (*shudder*) a lumbar puncture just to be on the safe side. I'm not good with needles. My toddler, who has a tantrum when there's an ad break on TV, took his shots better than I managed to give a sample of spinal fluid. Then I spent two weeks lying in a dark room listening to Stephen Fry read Harry Potter books to me and wishing my head would stop feeling like someone had stabbed my frontal lobe with an ice-pick.

But I'm almost better now! Last night I finally managed to get some writing done, and I'm looking good to attend the Romance Writers of Australia conference in Melbourne this weekend.

So - what has everyone else been doing for the past month?

Word Count - 611

Days 285 to 319 - And we're back on air!

Oh wow, this last month or so has just been so incredibly hectic!

First there was the RWA 50K in 30 Days, which went really well - so well, in fact, that it exceeded all my estimates for how much time and energy it would take ^_^ At the end of the day, our writers racked up nearly 2 million words during that time, and I couldn't be more proud of everyone. I didn't reach my goal for the month, but I did hit about 30,000 which I probably would not have done otherwise.

Then for the beginning of July I was at the RWA 5 Day Intensive Manuscript Development Workshop. I got so much out of it, and I feel so damn lucky to have been chosen. Stay tuned for a proper write up!

It's nice to be back home and blogging again - I look forward to catching up on everything I missed over the middle of the year!

Word count - 21,760 (but that's over the past 30-odd days)

Days 283 and 284 - Stealing from myself

I really liked this post I put up on the 50K in 30 Days blog, so I thought I'd share it here as well: 

Be not afraid of going slowly, be only afraid of standing still. 

- Chinese Proverb

It's so easy to look at the past and say "I could have done better. I SHOULD have done better. I should have written more, or made more time for editing." After all, it's going to take forever to get where we want to go if we don't make optimal use of our time, right? 

Regret and perfectionism can be a bigger drain on our productivity than pretty much anything else. Personally, I struggle to retain a sense of proportion - I've written x many words, which is x more words than I would have written otherwise. Still, it's not what I expected from myself. 

Writing is like life. It's messy, imperfect, full of unfulfilled potential (everyone has that one scene that was just so perfect in their head) and layered with excitement, regret, drudgery and bursts of inspiration. It may not go the way we want all the time, but if you do the best you can during the good times, the bad times can only ever drag you down so far. 

Word count - 2,972

Days 280 to 282 - Thank Goodness for Long Weekends

I've been so absolutely exhausted this weekend, I did pretty much nothing right up until Sunday afternoon. Once I buckled down and actually got going, I managed to pull out a decent word count, but I still feel bad for sleeping away most of my free time. It was necessary - I think I'm getting the bug Marcus had last week. My throat was caning earlier today.

While I was lying in bed, I managed to read my first ever full Neil Gaiman book. I once started American Gods, but just couldn't get into it. So I started with Stardust and absolutely loved it. Scarily, I just kept marvelling at his technique - he has such a beautiful way with words. I had to keep reminding myself I was reading for fun and stop examining sentence structure! ^_^

Word count - 7,083