Some days a writer feels like a lamppost
By Deanna | June 22, 2009
“Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.”
John Osborne
That warm feeling I got when my romantic comedy Heteroflexible advanced to quarterfinals in its first screenwriting competition at Blue Cat, became a warm, wet feeling when I read the script analysis.
Now, I do love my criticism. And it being emphatic is, to me, all the better. I’m known for rather acerbic critiques in my novel and screenplay groups. So I’m not really whining, just relating that odd sensation of having read both this: “When you’re insulting, you’re just insulting.”
And then advancing with the top 20 percent.
While the analysis samples on the Blue Cat site were all fairly even handed with good points/bad points in the 600 words they promise you, my reader gave up precisely 23 words with a tepid line about “a story that hasn’t been seen before,” then waylaid me for 1017 more. (I got bonus words!)
Other great moments in my feedback were, “so incredibly stereotypical,” “I don’t buy it,” and “clearly a first draft.” At the end I was encouraged to “go back to the outline and really work on it” with a reminder that “with most scripts, your goal is to make it into a film.”
It’s hard to imagine this is also the judge who advanced it. I did some digging around to see if BlueCat had separate critics from judges, but wasn’t able to find out for certain. It seems expensive for them to have two people read it, but who knows, maybe I was early in the pile and this critic liked the others even less.
I know humor is hard to write. And the subject matter for this story is easily the most controversial I’ve ever endeavored. I run the risk of alienating everybody, even the demographic the tale holds in the highest esteem.
But I do believe in this story. And I’m finishing up the novel version, which I recently cut down to 43,000 words to get rid of distracting story elements and slow scenes, gradually building it back up to the 70K minimum for a novel. I’ve incorporated some of the more specific feedback from this analysis into the novel, but I’m not really sure how to address the generalities of being insulting and stereotypical and not believable.
The story has a long way to go yet. The screenplay has only been through two drafts, and I’m on the second draft of the book.
But before I put either version before any more critics, I’ll make sure I’m dressed in something that won’t show the wet spots.
Topics: Humor, Writing | Comments Off
RUN, don’t walk to the nearest bookstore!
By Deanna | June 4, 2009
My friend Gaylon Greer’s book is out!
I was a critique buddy on this novel and let me tell you, it’s awesome!
So much, I even made a book trailer for him!
Vlad is one of the scariest characters I’ve read since Silence of the Lambs. But Shelby is a girl who can BRING IT, and you have to love a thriller with a strong girl protagonist who kicks butt.
Get it through IndieBound (independent bookstores)
Topics: Books | No Comments »
Images from Corpus
By Deanna | June 1, 2009
The entire fourth grade at my daughter’s school took a two-day trip to the Corpus-Port Aransas area last week. Other than the part where we huddled, cold and a little freaked out, during a lightning and rain storm on a boat, the trip went off very well.
If you asked the kids themselves what they liked best, it was probably the all-you-can-eat dessert bar at Golden Corral!
Topics: Photography, Life with Kids | Comments Off
High Dynamic Range Images — Wowee!
By Deanna | May 11, 2009
I want to make a shout out to local pro photographer Carlos Austin who turned me on to another amazing sensation in photography — High Dynamic Range imagery.
The concept is pretty easy. Often when we take a picture, we sacrifice something. To get faces to be well exposed, the sky is blown out white. Or to get the pretty blue horizon, other things are in silhouette. Statues are especially difficult to capture.
During my Photography Walking Tour of UT Class on Saturday (what fun students–one of my best classes of all time!), I got a chance to take a few shots myself, specifically over and underexposing my images so that I could test them out with Photomatix, software designed especially to combine your images to get the best exposure from each.
Here are the three shots I took of a statue on the South Mall.
And here is the resulting combined HDR image. What a difference!
Download the software and try it yourself. The trial version is free.
Topics: Better Pictures How To, Photography, Photo Classes | Comments Off
A Birthday Gift from Elizabeth to Me on Her Birthday
By Deanna | May 1, 2009
The birth of any child is a gift to a mother, but sometimes, along the way, our kids give us something more, a clearer picture of who we are, through their eyes.
Elizabeth turns seven today. She’s had a rough year, no doubt. She spent a week in Dell Children’s Hospital, and even though the diagnosis was pretty terrible, she’s proven that sometimes statistics simply don’t apply. She continues to be healthy and seizure-free despite severe brain abnormalities and MRI and EEG tests that are off the scale. (Heterotopic gray matter for the Googlers.)
One of the things she asked me to do for her birthday was to download a recent Miley Cyrus song from the Hannah Montana movie. She wanted to add it to her MP3 player.
I generally avoid the whole Hannah Montana phenom, but I told her I would, of course, for her birthday. She got oddly serious for a moment, laying her hand on my shoulder, looking at me with a wisdom she’s shown since the hospital, since a doctor said, right in front of her, “I cannot explain why this little girl is so normal,” as if Elizabeth couldn’t hear her.
But she looked me in the eye and said, “I think you should listen to it. It’s your kind of song.”
“How is that?”
“It’s about dreams.”
“Nightmares or good dreams?” I asked.
“Just dreams. Like your book.”
“You think dreams are for old people like me? Maybe they’re just for little girls like you.”
She grabbed her backpack off the floor. “Didn’t you start dreaming about writing books when you were a little girl?”
I was a little taken aback. “Well, yes, I guess I did.”
“And have you done it yet?”
Ouch. “Nope.”
“Then it’s still a dream.”
She ran off toward the door. “Don’t get too busy and forget my song!” Ah, she knows me.
After she left, I dutifully pulled up the song on I-tunes and bought it for her MP3. And when I heard it, I knew exactly what she meant.
If you can’t manage the Disney-fication of this, the lyrics are below. I was not fond of the official video, so this is an alternate one with movie scenes.
I can almost see it
That dream I’m dreaming but
There’s a voice inside my head sayin,
You’ll never reach it,
Every step I’m taking,
Every move I make feels
Lost with no direction
My faith is shaking but I
Got to keep trying
Got to keep my head held high
There’s always going to be another mountain
I’m always going to want to make it move
Always going to be an uphill battle,
Sometimes you going to have to lose,
Ain’t about how fast I get there,
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side…
It’s the climb…
The struggles I’m facing,
The chances I’m taking
Sometimes they knock me down but
No I’m not breaking
The pain I’m knowing
But these are the moments that
I’m going to remember most yeah
Just got to keep going
And I,
I got to be strong
Just keep pushing on,
There’s always going to be another mountain
I’m always going to want to make it move
Always going to be an uphill battle,
Sometimes you going to have to lose,
Ain’t about how fast I get there,
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side…
It’s the climb…
There’s always going to be another mountain
I’m always going to want to make it move
Always going to be an uphill battle,
Sometimes you going to have to lose,
Ain’t about how fast I get there,
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side…
It’s the climb…(yeeeahhhh)
Keep on moving
Keep climbing
Keep the faith baby…
It’s all about
It’s all about
The climb
Keep the faith
Keep your faith
Song writers: Jon Mabe, Jessi Alexander
Topics: Poignancy, Writing, Life with Kids, The Blogging Life | Comments Off
Oh my G, you’re an F!
By Deanna | April 13, 2009
Unlike the Facts of Life conversations, which tend to be initiated by my six-year-old, the Bad Words talk is one that I will bring up myself. Part of this comes from morbid maternal curiosity. The rest is to make sure more Newspeak isn’t occurring (the school has banned “stupid” and “freak,” and I don’t agree with cutting out ordinary words over poor usage.)
Last time we had this conversation, we learned Elizabeth’s S-bomb. Today, as we sat on the sofa, she informed me she had two new ones.
“Lay them on me,” I told her.
She shook her head, as expected.
“Okay, so what do they start with?”
“With one you say “oh my” first.” She nodded knowingly. “It’s like ‘Oh my word’ or ‘Oh my gosh,’ but this one is bad.”
Well, that wasn’t too hard to guess. I decided to challenge her. “What if you’re praying? Can you say, ‘Oh my God’ then?”
She considered this for a moment. “I guess that would be okay.”
“So we’ve established that in some cases, it is all right to say, ‘Oh my God.’”
She fingered her hot pink dress nervously. “Yeah, okay.”
“So is it really a bad word, if we sometimes can use it?”
“You mean like stupid?”
“Right. You can say ‘This stupid pen won’t write,’ and that’s okay.”
“So you can say ‘Oh my God’ sometimes too?”
“Yes.” Hopefully she was catching on. “So it’s not really a bad word.”
“Okay.” She pushed her blond hair out of her face. “I don’t think you can EVER say the other one.”
“What’s it start with?”
“First you say, ‘You’re a–’” She stopped.
“And what does the next word start with?”
“F.”
“Freak?’
“No.”
“Fool?”
“No.”
I was quite sure we weren’t going for the big kahuna, but I thought I’d check. “You don’t say ‘mother’ with it?”
“No!”
“I give up. Just tell me the word.”
Her eyes got very big. “No way.”
“I promise you won’t be in trouble.”
She shook her head.
“What if you’re in trouble if you DON’T tell me?”
She smiled. She knew I was bluffing. “You said you know all the bad words. Figure it out.” And she hopped off the sofa. Our conversation was done.
I’m still in that golden mother stage where my kids think I know everything, and they will mostly do what I tell them, believe what I believe. I’ve got a couple good years yet.
But if you have any idea what “You’re an F–” stands for, please clue me in. I promise you won’t be in trouble.
(I don’t allow comments on this blog due to Internet trolls, but if you are on Facebook, friend me there and read what everyone is guessing the word could be.)
UPDATE: We had some great guesses on Facebook, and Irma was the closest with “fatty.” At dinner the other night, it took 20 minutes of questioning (involving her sister) before we got the answer: fat girl.
Topics: Humor | Comments Off
The Facts of Life, Part Deux: Torture the Mother
By Deanna | March 27, 2009
So, a month or so ago, you read my lovely initial birds and bees conversation with my six-year-old. (Yes, SIX.)
Apparently Elizabeth has babies on the brain, as yesterday when we were stuck on Mopac, she suddenly asked, “How do you make a baby?”
Thankfully, traffic was at a dead stop, or I might have swerved off the road. This would be multi-tasking at its finest.
In a brilliant extension of my previous tactic, I answered with another question. “What do you mean?”
She would not be thwarted. “I mean, what makes a baby?”
Deep breath. “Well, inside a daddy is a part that makes the baby. And in the mother is the other part. When they come together, they make a baby start to grow in the mother’s tummy.”
“But how does he get it in there?”
Arrrghhh! My nine-year-old was mercifully silent, hunched in the back seat as though she could disappear into the cushion.
I decided to evade, not wanting to get into technical aspects. “He puts it inside the mom. And then it grows for over nine months, and then it comes out.” Genius use of ambiguous pronouns, thank you very much.
She still wanted details. “But how does he get it IN there?”
Traffic inched forward another three feet, then stopped. My mind raced. No McDonald’s nearby. No ice cream shops. What I wouldn’t give for a Chuck E. Cheese at the moment! Here, kids, tokens! Anything but The Talk!
But I was trapped.
“How does it, Mama, how does it?”
“Well, the mom and dad just decide it is time, and so they…” Oh, someone get me out of this. “They decide to make the baby.”
The cars nudged past the on ramp that was slowing us down, and we cruised a little faster.
“Almost there!” I said, lying like a toddler with a fistful of stolen cookie. We had another twenty minutes easy. “Who wants gelato when we get to Mandola’s?”
They girls chorused “Me, me!”
“Which flavor is best?” I asked.
“Chocolate!” Elizabeth shouted.
“No lemon!” Emily said.
“Nuh uh!”
“Is too!”
My work here was done.
Topics: Humor, Life with Kids | Comments Off
The Facts of Life Are All About…Marriage, Apparently
By Deanna | February 24, 2009
My six-year-old flopped on the bed with no indication whatsoever she was about to drop a bombshell.
“So, Mama, can I have a baby before I’m married?”
I had to think for a minute. These questions are never what they seem, like the time the big horrid bad word she heard at school, that started with “s,” turned out to be “stupid.” My big anti-censorship lecture, wasted.
I decided the best tactic was to answer the question with another question.
“Do you think it’s happened already?”
“NO!” She laughed at me.
“Then clarify, please.”
“What if you have a baby in your tummy, but you aren’t married?”
I’m about to wax poetic on how one does not need to marry someone just because he fathered a child, when she went on. “I mean, does it get stuck in there until you’re married? Can it not come out?”
I feigned a coughing fit so I could compose myself. AND figure out how to answer.
“Well,” I began, with no idea where I was going to take it. “No. The baby will come out whether you get married or not.”
She looked puzzled at this. “But how?”
“Well there are two ways a baby can come out–”
“No!” Exasperation. “Does it have to stay in there longer? How does it stay in there?”
“Are you asking me how a baby gets INTO the mother?” Please, please say no. I can’t manage this in first grade terminology. I suddenly remembered the infamous line from Kindergarten Cop, “Boys have a penis, and a girls have a vagina!”
“NO!” She gripped the blankets on my bed, frustrated.
“I know this is a real mystery,” I said. “It’s hard to understand.”
“So I can have a baby before I’m married?” Back to square one.
“Yes,” I said. “It might be harder, being a single mom, but people do it all the time.” I gave examples of friends whose moms were raising them, dads gone or moved away.
“But the dad was there when the baby came out.” This is still a sticking point.
“The dad really only has to be there when it goes in,” I said. Although actually, with sperm banks, even that might be optional.
“The dad puts the baby in?” She seems shocked, and I can see her mental image of the dad somehow inserting an infant.
Enough. Bring on the mom cop out. “Time for bed,” I said. “We can talk about this some more tomorrow.”
I herded her to the bedroom. Hopefully tomorrow she’d have easier questions. Like the cost effectiveness of the bank bailout and the economic flow of the stimulus package. Or tips on a successful exit strategy in Iraq.
Quite possibly, it won’t come up again until her wedding day. Or when she tells me I’m going to be a grandma. Whichever comes first.
Topics: Humor, Life with Kids | Comments Off