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Jan. 24th, 2009 11:45 pmI should really just go to bed. It's 11:45 and Sat has flown by. Wales and I saw Slumdog Millionaire tonight - possibly the best film I've seen in a long time. It's quite violent in places, but other than that, almost flawless. And very textured and layered. Not an easy film to watch - due to a couple of quite graphic torture scenes. But it is a powerful one. The type of film that stays with you long after it is over and the audience grows deathly silent during.
Also finished reading the novel Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff this week. Which deserves a book review, but I've no time and been distracting myself with a rather enjoyable discussion of the Angel S6 comics on an lj blog I discovered via a list of links on my flist. Haven't had a good discussion about Angel or Buffy in ages. It's literary/psychological analysis and plot critique, which I enjoy.
Oh well, before hopping off to bed. Well not hopping. No energy. Dragging my sluggish body to bed. Will print the following bit from an interview with the writer of Monsters of Templeton - regarding her writing process. I should tell you the novel, Monsters of Templeton contains a lot of false historical narrative about a fictional town based on Cooperstown New York. The plot concerns an archeaologist who finds out her real father may be linked to the town's founders and her own ancestors and digs into the town's past -as far back as the early 1700s to find the information.
What was the writing process like for you? Did you write the story first and fill in the history later, or vice versa, or neither?
Lauren Groff: "I always knew that I was going to write about my hometown, and that I was going to use a great deal of its history, but I did about a year's worth of research before I wrote even one word of the story. I ended up with four complete drafts, each vastly different, and Willie [this is the heroine or protagonist of the novel - the lead character] as she is wasn't even born until the last draft. At one point the novel was a collection of six novellas, with little overlap; in another, the ghost of Marmaduke narrated; in another , Willie, was actually a boy. I write full drafts, then throw them out completely, and start anew. It's difficult, and very discouraging, but I do feel that I start the next draft in a much stronger way because at least I understand how I had failed the time before."
Funky. I did that with one book I wrote before discarding the thing in a heap completely.
Well, except for the year of research. Was more like two months.
My current novel? I did not write that way. I wrote and discarded paragraphs. At one point I lost 50 pages of it, which I had to write completely from scratch - a middle section - that I think was better the second time around. But for me my writing is a sort of therapy - my last book certainly was. And all the essay writing I posted online from 2002-2005 certainly was - realized today that I'd suffered a nervous breakdown in 2001-2002, and it took me four years to pull myself out of it. My mother said it was my focus on "Buffy" that saved me, but no, I said, it wasn't just that - it was writing about Buffy and the internet or more accurately a select group of people that I interacted with on a couple of fanboards - in a weird form of group therapy - associated with the Buffy and Angel series that did it. Who bolstered my confidence and together, helped me work through my issues and rebuild my reality - which had been shattered in 2001. They know who they are, I don't have to tell them. I keep thanking them anyways and they know why, I don't have to tell them that either, I know that.
But.
Some things go without saying even if you feel on occassion that you have to say them anyways...because the thing about angels, the human variety, they don't always know they are acting like angels.
Also finished reading the novel Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff this week. Which deserves a book review, but I've no time and been distracting myself with a rather enjoyable discussion of the Angel S6 comics on an lj blog I discovered via a list of links on my flist. Haven't had a good discussion about Angel or Buffy in ages. It's literary/psychological analysis and plot critique, which I enjoy.
Oh well, before hopping off to bed. Well not hopping. No energy. Dragging my sluggish body to bed. Will print the following bit from an interview with the writer of Monsters of Templeton - regarding her writing process. I should tell you the novel, Monsters of Templeton contains a lot of false historical narrative about a fictional town based on Cooperstown New York. The plot concerns an archeaologist who finds out her real father may be linked to the town's founders and her own ancestors and digs into the town's past -as far back as the early 1700s to find the information.
What was the writing process like for you? Did you write the story first and fill in the history later, or vice versa, or neither?
Lauren Groff: "I always knew that I was going to write about my hometown, and that I was going to use a great deal of its history, but I did about a year's worth of research before I wrote even one word of the story. I ended up with four complete drafts, each vastly different, and Willie [this is the heroine or protagonist of the novel - the lead character] as she is wasn't even born until the last draft. At one point the novel was a collection of six novellas, with little overlap; in another, the ghost of Marmaduke narrated; in another , Willie, was actually a boy. I write full drafts, then throw them out completely, and start anew. It's difficult, and very discouraging, but I do feel that I start the next draft in a much stronger way because at least I understand how I had failed the time before."
Funky. I did that with one book I wrote before discarding the thing in a heap completely.
Well, except for the year of research. Was more like two months.
My current novel? I did not write that way. I wrote and discarded paragraphs. At one point I lost 50 pages of it, which I had to write completely from scratch - a middle section - that I think was better the second time around. But for me my writing is a sort of therapy - my last book certainly was. And all the essay writing I posted online from 2002-2005 certainly was - realized today that I'd suffered a nervous breakdown in 2001-2002, and it took me four years to pull myself out of it. My mother said it was my focus on "Buffy" that saved me, but no, I said, it wasn't just that - it was writing about Buffy and the internet or more accurately a select group of people that I interacted with on a couple of fanboards - in a weird form of group therapy - associated with the Buffy and Angel series that did it. Who bolstered my confidence and together, helped me work through my issues and rebuild my reality - which had been shattered in 2001. They know who they are, I don't have to tell them. I keep thanking them anyways and they know why, I don't have to tell them that either, I know that.
But.
Some things go without saying even if you feel on occassion that you have to say them anyways...because the thing about angels, the human variety, they don't always know they are acting like angels.