Holiday 2009 Must See Movie List

I've gone months without going to my second favourite place to spend time outside the bookstore - the movie theatre. So, in anticipation of having a little more time around Christmas and New Year's I have my Must See Movie list all ready to go (some of these came out in November but, hey, they're still in the theatres so they count)

The Blind Side - Love movies based on true sports stories. Sandra Bullock looks like she's finally playing to her age and away from her tried and true rom coms. Love her, love the story and I can see it with my kids. Sold.

Sherlock Holmes - Robert Downey Jr. is an Acting God. 'Nuff said.

Up in the Air - Heard this will be the movie to sweep the Oscars. Even if it didn't star George Clooney, the fact that Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking) wrote and directed it would be enough to get me to fork over the bucks to see it.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox - I have to have one animated movie on the list for the youngest. This one has gotten terrific reviews.

Everybody's Fine - A father trying to reconnect with his adult children. Robert DeNiro playing a sympathetic, lonely man. Must see.

A Single Man - Hello? Colin Firth? Automatic Must See.

So there it is. My holiday movie must see list. About twelve hours of time I must spend in a movie theatre. Quite happily!

Why Waiting is Sometimes A Good Thing

First of all, let me be quite clear - I hate waiting. Hated it since I was a kid and my mom would be puttering around the house doing God knows what while the rest of us waited in the car knowing we'd be inevitably late for whatever event we were headed to. I despised walking in after something started with all eyes on us and everybody thinking, "Finally. Now we can eat." (Note: My Portuguese family didn't like waiting to get started in on the food.)

I think that's what made me become the chronic early arriver I am now. I am always at least 15 minutes early to doctor's appointments, meet ups with friends, etc. My clocks at home are set five minutes fast just to get my chronically late family out the door just a little bit faster (and, just as an aside, what giant cosmic joke has been played on me that not only was I raised by a chronically late arriver I am now surrounded by two out of three offspring and one husband with the same disease? /rant ). Yes, all in all, I'd say one of the great beliefs of my life has always been that faster is better, waiting sucks and life's too short to spend twiddling your thumbs waiting for stuff to happen.

You know where this is leading, don't you? Yup. That kind of blanket belief is ripe for a challenge. Through my writing journey I've learned that early is not necessarily better all the time. And taking your time can be a very good thing sometimes.

We all know publishing is a slow business - g-l-a-c-i-a-l-l-y sloooooooow. I wonder how I've stuck it out for as long as I have knowing my little personality quirk. But I have learned to appreciate the time it takes to get things done in this industry. Take, for example, the fact that once a book is acquired it takes about a year to have it released (let's not get into how long it takes to get a book acquired - that's a whole other level of waiting). Sometimes less, sometimes more but on average you've got about a year if you're lucky. Some writers have to wait almost two years to get a slot on the publishers list. Yes, that year or two can be excrutiating wait for that final step in the journey. Especially when you've got friends and family members regularly asking you: "When's you're book coming out?" (insert Nelsa grinding teeth here)

I've got about five months to go until Illegally Blonde is released and now I can say I'm really glad it took this amount of time. I'm waiting for the last final proof to arrive from the publisher and I'm not going to rush going over those pages (well, if I'm given a day to look over them then I'll rush! :). But now, more than ever, it is a time to savour the book - before it's released. It is, in a weird kind of way, my last time to 'own' it. This year long wait has been my opportunity to get used to the idea of being published. It's been a time to prepare myself for the book being out there - for me being out there to promote it as best I can. People are starting to ask what I'm going to do about the book launch and I tell them I'm not sure yet. I'm taking time to sort ideas out in my head. There's nothing concrete yet but, for once, I'm taking my time to figure it out. I'm sure when the release comes everything will seem super speeded up so I'm not complaining about the wait now. I kind of appreciate it.

I've definitely learned that slow isn't necessarily always bad, that rushing to or through something can lead to mistakes (especially speeding tickets), that taking the time to savour the moment - to really think about where you are now and where you want to be - is something everyone should learn to appreciate. For me, this year long wait for the book to come out has been a good thing.

Now, if I could just learn to appreciate how long it takes my son to get himself dressed in the morning...

Keeping Your Writing Mojo Alive When Christmas is Around the Corner

So I had a slight freak out this morning when I looked at the calendar and saw those dreaded words - December 1st.

December?? Already???

Don't get me wrong - l love me my Christmas time. Love the decorations, the music, the friends and family get togethers, the food, even the snow (about the only time of the year I love the snow). I even have a birthday thrown in there just before the holidays for an extra dab of something special. Although, if I'm being honest, I'm not too keen on celebrating that particular event these days. But, as with anything worthwhile, the holidays come with a price - more stuff to plan and do within an already packed schedule. So with spare time at a premium what's a conscientious little writer to do?

Weirdly enough, I tend to get a lot of my writing done in the month of December. Sure, I'm off for a few days here and there but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm sitting at home all day tapping or scribbling away. I think it has more to do with the fact that in 31 days it will be the end of the year. To me, that creates a huge deadline in my mind. What do I want to have accomplished by the end of 2009? Do I only want to have 50 pages written in the new WIP? Or can I get to the halfway mark - get over that dreaded middle hump so that the new year will start off with one of my goals already halfway accomplished?

I also think about all of the extra things I do during this month and convince myself if I can find time to decorate a house, buy the gifts, attend the parties why can't I find the time to write? Really, in a way, that's almost the easiest thing to do compared with all the other stuff I have to get done. Writing is something I LOVE to do. I love to make up stories. How can it be hard to find the time to do something I love?

Yet there's that old saying - we always hurt the ones we love so I know it's quite easy to neglect the writing. But during this busy month, it is critical to keep that love alive - that mojo for writing - because it's so much harder to get back onto a track once you've derailed. Yes, a new year has so much hope and possibility that it's easy to say 'I'll start writing again in the New Year' but the real test comes at the end of a long, hard year. If you can finish off the year knowing you've continued to write during one of the most distracting months of the calendar then you know you can handle the easier months. Besides, at the beginning of the new year you'll be that much farther ahead!

So don't let December distract you! Keep on writing!

Positivity

One of the things I like about Twitter is getting to know new people and links to their blogs. One of the people I follow on Twitter shared a blog post from this site

www.positivityblog.com

(sorry I can't seem to make the link work yet. I'll keep trying)

A blog on how to be positive! I so needed to find this resource. I struggle on a daily basis to try and curb my natural tendency towards cynicism. Looking on the bright side is one of the harder things to achieve in my life but when I do succeed it makes a total difference in my life and my family's life.

So that's why I'm highly recommending this blog and sending positive vibes to all who strive for seeing the up side in life! Besides, any blogger who has a post on What Bruce Springsteen Can Teach You About Life has definite cred with me.

Choosing Your Life Path

Daughter One has been checking out universities for the last little while in anticipation of one of the biggest decisions of her life - where will she spend the next four years and what will she study? In essence, what will be the launch pad to the rest of her life?

Pretty scary intimidating stuff and not something to undertake with little to no thought. But as I try to mellow her anxiety out a little I do think back and consider what if? What if I'd studied somewhere else, something else all those years ago, what path would my life have taken? And even though I think I might have turned to writing earlier or, perhaps, not at all, or I might have become an actress or gone into behind the scenes television production or, or, or, ... I always come back to the thought "It doesn't matter what choice you made. It matters that you had a choice."

All the wrong turns, the right turns, the turns you didn't even know you were making at the time, eventually, I believe,lead you to the path that is calling the strongest to you. I want to reassure One that no decision is completely irreversible. Mistakes happen but you learn and grow from those too. At the best the mistaken paths show you where you don't want to go!

In the end, all I can tell her is that this big decision is one of many, many more in her life. But it is not the be all and end all. It will take her on one path of many to come and whatever happens on it she will learn and grow from it.

While having choices is confusing and making a choice is hard having no choices at all is the worst thing in the world. Embrace the possibilities that life offers and your life path will eventually reveal itself.

And the best thing of all? You make the decisions.

The Struggle to Write

So, it must be part and parcel of what I'm going through with respect to the WIP - even coming up with an idea and writing a blog post is a struggle for me these days.

I don't want to give up on my commitment of writing two blog posts a week because once that happens it's a slippery slope to writing nothing at all. Which will make it all the harder to get back into the swing of things once I finally get the ideas back or the urge or whatever it is that propels us to write. I've noticed a few writers have mentioned their own struggles either with their works in progress or the blog or just keeping up with all of the various communities we both love to be a part of yet take an inordinate amount of time to maintain the proper involvement.

Maybe it's because it is November and NaNoWriMo is going on. The energy to commit to drafting an entire novel in one month is huge and I'm in awe of those who can do it. But a lot of writers, me included, did not put that pressure on ourselves. So what's up with this difficulty in finding words? November is a particularly hellish month for me personally with many family and work commitments that make it very hard to carve out some writing time. But I wonder if it is that or am I going forward slowly because I just finished the revision of my last book (which, hopefully, will find a publishing home as well)after finishing the edits of Illegally Blonde after finishing a book that my agent did not like after finishing a book that she did like but did not sell and that needs another revision. In the last two years I figure I've written over 500,000 words - whether new or revised. That's a lot of writing.

So, while I know marathon runners can do two or three (or however many) runs in one year, they also need to take breaks or do shorter, less intense races because their bodies can take only so much. But what they always do - always - is run almost every day. They have to because they love it and because it's good for them in the long run (ha! pun). Once it's time for that big race they are prepared. Their muscles are not rusty.

Writing is no different. I may not be doing the Boston Marathon right now, but I'm still forcing myself to go for a shorter run through the neighbourhood - it may not be as intense but it keeps things loose. So I'm ready for the big race.

Writer's Crawl

We've all heard of writer's block, right? That blank, empty page that seems impossible to fill. Well, I may not have writer's block but I think I've developed writer's crawl. Where I seem to only have a few paragraphs of writing that comes out of me lately. And those seep out at an agonizingly slow pace.

I'm not sure if it's because I'm still feeling out this story or if I'm just not feeling the story. Those are two very different things.

Feeling out the story is like walking through a dark room where you can vaguely sort out the furniture but nothing is sharply defined and you have to bump into somethings before you can find your way out. That necessitates going slowly.

Feeling the story is something else entirely. It's that burning need to tell the story. You understand the characters, the motivations, the idea and the story seeps inside your head and when the words come out its a flow because you just get it. The room is completely lit and you see everything clearly. You can walk through it without bumping into one darn thing.

So when I've got writer's crawl I'm trying to figure out if I'm just figuring out the story or if I'm not into the story. I really hope it's the former because I love this idea and I think I'll love these characters. If I could just write more than a few sentences at a time on it!

Well, I'll have some uninterrupted train travel time tomorrow and Tuesday. If I can't move from crawling to a brisk walk then I'll really start worrying.