LONELYPOND PRESENTS

The thing that cheered me up today, from @chandlerisms: “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”

I was skipping through the entirety of my withoutabox blog, which I had e-mailed to myself(long story for a not so late night), and realized that I often mentioned the mark of a true lonelypond blog entry is a mention of insomnia, Shakespeare and/or Lois Lane. And I never mention Ms. Lane anymore (this is the brunette part of B + B, in case you haven’t figured that out yet).

Although the part of the still very small smallville season finale I did watch had her and Tess rolling around on a desk (oh, come on, just put them in jello and don’t pretend you write plots that are any good anymore — note that I am not advocating jello wrestling(yes, I really need to sleep; that might cut down on these tangents) or watching actresses on the still very smallville wrestle in said jello(that would only make it tinyville) — where was I –oh, Lois rolling into the future with a ring and The Legion…maybe Erica Durance and the LSH will come back next year with some writers who have a sense of humor, a sense of style and want to once again have the best music on TV since Buffy. Besides, “what kind of TV show kills off Jimmy Olsen” — I’m quoting Gayle. Sigh. smallstill.

Oh, right, and still not sleeping and thinking I should go down and pull a Peter Cheyney book off the shelf; he’s a British writer of the hard boiled detective school. I discovered his works, oddly enough, in a bookstore in O’Hare Airport and have treasured them ever since. You can probably guess why from the titles: Dangerous Curves, It Couldn’t Matter Less, Sorry You’ve Been Troubled, You Can’t Keep The Change, and Dames Don’t Care (don’t have that one and no, you can’t borrow the rest.)

I have been reading Nicola Griffith’s blog with some frequency recently, partly in gratitude for her getting me back to reading and the library and partly because we seem to dislike the same books. A recent answer about where she gets her characters’ names reminded me of interviewing Tamora Pierce. How to come up with names and characters is one of the things Pierce gets asked most often in Q + A sessions.

So this got me thinking about creativity and characters and how they take over whatever you’re working on and everything you’re thinking about…even when I’m directing a play as it seems exposure to weeks of The Miser aka L’Avare (and the impending interruption of my Financial Times subscription — newspaper vs. car payment, car wins) is making me grumpy about money and cynical about marriage (and I’m almost sentimental usually) — nearly every character is suggesting writing widowhood/widower status after three months or so into the wedding contract. So there’s the draft of a post titled “WHY THE ECONOMY HAS ALWAYS SUCKED FOR ARTISTS” sitting in a folder, but I really do prefer not to dwell on that sort of thing as I am happy with the active choices I’ve made to direct the plays I choose, film the movies I want and follow the characters that come to me (as well as have time for tea with Gayle when her insane work and sleep schedule allows). So instead of that rant, I’m channelling my energy into other posts (this and the previous and the haiku).

Back to characters, the flow of creativity and naming after that much briefer rant:

Jane and Sally at one point just took over In The Bleak December…I remember a couple of frustrating nights where Sally just insisted on behaving like herself and it was nothing at all like I had planned. That was extremely educational. Sally was inspired by an actual person so I kept her first name; Jane just seemed to go along with it. And Jane’s last name is lifted from a cool science fiction adventurer type I used to try to fit into something — Mycroft Holloway (first name after Sherlock Holmes smarter brother but the character was a girl). I find the naming process very exciting as I take time with the names and discovering the personalities that they connect to…

In the mystery I was recently working on — before the Muse that is comedy took over again — I have a completed first draft with a cool collection of four different narrators. Rereading it led me to the conclusion that the narrator I started with had to be excised and a character who only popped in a couple of times but brought so much energy with him needed to take over a third of the book and drive the sequel. Before the draft really took off, I had to sit down and connect a bunch of family and sibling dots.

I do family trees as a tool…I remember one of the grand fantasy narratives I wrote as a teenager involved complicated and intense family trees for both the human and horse characters.

For LONELY POND MONSTER (looking for love)…the process started with me being a preparation fiend and wanting to shoot a short before the big Shakespeare tangented project we were all excited about…so one friend said, “well, the place I’m staying at has a pond and we can film there” which turned into me ripping out a story about a Lonely Pond Monster who wanted to make friends by joining in activities and a Spinning Girl who was trying to fit in by changing her wardrobe…and there would be no dialogue because as it was my first movie and much as I love our sound and sound effects guru, he often has the same effect on me that tequila used to (there’s the book Jill Shaffer and I were going to write where each chapter started with “and then I took another shot of tequila” complete with the real time authors’ experience of the same — my poetry phases are always interesting) so I decided silent film with music, let’s emphasize my skill with directing physical comedy. And then LONELY POND MONSTER (looking for love) turned into two of my favorite weekends, a really cool story and a love for the process of movie making. And the Shakespeare tangent movie– well, that’s a story for daylight hours.

So basically, imagining characters, naming them and following them where they lead is one the best and craziest adventures there can be so enjoy it. They’ll thank you for it.

And now, I’m going to read part of a novel for at least six minutes. Good night all; dream well.

And if I didn’t have a problem with it, I would have said something sensible, noble and touchy-feely like being true to myself or the journey or…

So here I am in a ferment…I hate them when I’m in them, but often something positive comes out once I’ve churned my way through so I have learned to be a little patient with them — or at least not let them totally unnerve me.

I also feel like I should be walking but this is one of those topple over in a strong wind days so I’m channelling energy through the finger and forearm muscles. And should is a verb I’ve outlawed…

Patience, patience was supposed to be a launching point for a segue involving my friend@LisaMurray , Friday’s Awesome Optimist on the Awesome Optimist youTube channel. This week’s episode: Patience. Lisa wanted to know what stopped and frustrated you. So I started thinking about that.

And then there was Gomez, in Lancaster when we were videotaping Red Sea Radio in Harrisburg for Jeremy. So I started a Twitter conversation with them and, bless them, they started a twitter conversation with @blinkkittylove which was exciting and fun and distracted me from not feeling well but also started me thinking more about Blink Kitty Love.

And then there was @nicolaz who tweeted a new blog post and I decided to read and it was about the pleasures of reading which led me to thinking about the pleasures, many and sundry of writing.

And also, the lack of gay characters in what I do…although, that’s not strictly true. It’s just something I throw at myself when I’m trying to continue creative purgatory instead of finding something to laugh at or do. “The Mystery” has a gay character at its center, should (there we go) I ever rewrite it (and as I have a really cool sequel I WANT (the word we actually need) to write), “The M” needs to happen. But I also have been stewing about Blink Kitty Love, because TK was stuck in the androgynous zone(male? female? I didn’t know) and I was so hoping either or both TK or Tinker would turn out gay but TK’s skewing guy, Tinker’s still got her crush and Tammy’s putting old school kd lang songs into my head. And yes, if you’ve ever written anything, you’ll know that characters do occasionally make up their own minds. When I was writing In The Bleak December, Sally wouldn’t listen to me at all. And that was a good thing.

So, where am I? Not writing, not walking, feeling a bit better now and I should probably stop ranting and grab the last bit of sun. Tallyho.

Drew, Nancy Drew…The classic Nancy Drew is apparently too cool and composed and competent and collected and well, cool to take if you are the editor/publisher of the modern version of the girl detective. They had to make her less of a gem. In the newer novels, Nancy is (horror!) disheveled and the kind of girl who runs out of gas and gets rescued by the guy with the tow truck and nagged by Bess, now a master mechanic. Obviously, the traditional Nancy, alpha female of all time, is not a suitable role model for young girls. The Papercutz graphic novels do a bit better and allow Nancy to be stylish, but the new Hardy Boys novels where Frank and Joe are members of ATAC (American Teens Against Crime) and go on secret missions, alternating narrators by chapter, is a much better update than the Nancy Drew novels where action and competence seem to be traded for no, of course I’m not perfect and yes, I do have a rival, just like other girls. Combine Nancy and the Hardy Boys and it gets a little better, but still not enough.

And why the Nancy Drew rant…well, I miss her. I’m looking at the two Nancy Drew graphic novels I picked up at the comic book store (optimistically ordered; the series is now off my pull list) and there’s no challenge, no suspense, no fright, no Nancy conquers all and rescues Ned/George/Bess/Carson Drew far more often than anyone rescues her. And the new novels are even worse. I’ve stopped trying them out at the library, although I did still pick up the latest Hardy Boys for awhile as I like the action and the Joe/Frank interaction. But the 3 part series Murder House put me off that even.

I might try the next Drew/Hardy combo, Club Dread, but only if I happen across it. Until then, I’m sticking to vintage Nancy and Chet Gecko.

Nancy Drew the movie had a nice version of Nancy but did a huge disservice to the story by taking her out of River Heights.

Back to my shelves. We had Gayle’s mom ship her copies up from Kentucky after the disappointment of the movie. Time to enjoy them again. There’s a weekend plan.

Well, when I have something to tell everyone — real or imagined– in my internet universe, it involves pinging it across four services, then adding it manually to the original movie blog and linkedin, although I should be able to ping to linkedin, but I don’t want to spend that much time at either site figuring it out. That’s a lot of pinging plus –not to mention the original upload to myToons and the I should do it soon upload to YouTube…it’s an internet broadband slogfest. I’ve given up the group e-mail at least, so that’s a little less typing.

And did I have anything else to say? Thanks to one of my Twitter follows, spent the evening listening to Blondfire/Astaire and the like on last.fm. One of my favorite songs was in French; must look into a film festival in Quebec (or perhaps Cannes — they have shorts); so much of what I turn out involves no dialogue, just music and comedy, so an international film festival might be the ticket.

Had too much to do this weekend, but finished SPCA holiday auction article and posted new animation so feeling of accomplishment and money eventually due in my bank account for the article. I also sent an e-mail of resignation to my editor. I’m giving up freelancing as of the beginning of the year(yes, breaking news, you heard it here after twitter).

Not only did
1. I get an offer to direct a what I hope will be hysterical version of Moliere’s The Miser in the spring, which will push my Taming of The Shrew preparation up to February or so as now May will be presenting the Miser month, not find and dust off my small but necessary pile of Shakespeare essentials month, but

2. there’s also the completed first draft of a really cool mystery I wrote this summer while under the influence of the Hardy Boys, Chet Gecko (who is Chet Gecko? read Give My Regrets to Broadway and laugh, laugh, laugh) and the nieces and nephews. I’m disappointed that I haven’t found the time to type it into the computer — an essential part of the transformation process. I don’t feel guilty or that I’ve been procrastinating as I have had legitimate distractions, I’m just disappointed. I’d like to see how the next draft turns out, especially as I might be dumping a character — still undecided. Hence need for a newer, better version of the story…and updating my laptop so I can work without the distraction of internet access(yes, you.) And then,

3. well, I tend to obsess and put everything else on hold while doing something and freelancing is neither an effective nor lucrative use of my time — not that lucrative is a make or break point(if I had an accountant he or she would have been sobbing for years; if I had an agent, well, he or she’d probably be making a decent living — creating I can do, selling not so much).

Right, plus there’s my fiendish plan for PROJECT PYE, which I think met with Calvin approval and finishing Jabberwocky (anyone know how you say that en francais?) and the myToons and website redesign.

At the moment, I need a good book and a week off…this may just be possible; keep your fingers crossed. Immediately, I am going to dash off some quick TV reviews and then curl up with LAST Saturday’s FT weekend…or a Chet Gecko (good late night reading).