The Magic Box
Inspiration. Who knows where it comes from. For me it comes from everywhere and at the worst and most important times nowhere at all. Sigh.
I was checking out TED which I love. Trolling for inspiration and a little motivation when I came across this wonderful talk from Lost creator J.J. Abrams.
It’s so good especially for this quote: “That blank page is a magic box.” What a fresh way to look at it. With magic. It’s a way to open your work up to endless possibilities. Taking away the restrictions of the critic sitting on your shoulder or the evil little troll in your head saying, “oh no you can’t do it that way or go in that direction.”
Then he gets into the magic of the mystery box. The lure of anticipation, the unknown and the excitement of it. Watch and enjoy.
What’s your mystery box? Mine is a Dell and my Nikon and of course my crazy Gemini mind.
Best,
KwanaIgnorance=Bliss
The other morning I woke up with one thought on my mind. “I wish I had a straight contemporary romance novel.”Seriously, these were the words that entered my mind as I opened my eyes. Strange right? Now none of my three ideas which I’m still very excited about and talked about is as a straight contemporary. But I know where this came from. I have just finished reading Lisa Kleypas’ Smooth Talking Stranger and she’s one smooth writer. You seem to pick up her books, you get involved with the characters, you read it and ‘poof’ it’s done. I love it.Then it came to me, I did have a contemporary romance, my very first book from waaaay back when.Now I know this book is a hot mess and I do mean a hotttt mess. But I went to the old computer and after some frantic searching I found it along with a very embarrassing query letter. (I can’t belive I sent that hot mess out eek!) The embarrassing thing about this query is this is before I joined RWA and had done all my reading and learning about queries so it’s really long with no hook to speak of. The crazy thing about it is in its longness I found that I wrote the shortest synopsis of my life when I didn’t know anything about writing a synopsis at all. Nowadays my goal is to write a short synopsis and I’m having the hardest time doing that. Getting anywhere near 5 pages is torture and suddenly there it was, right before my eyes, written by me, a 1 ½ page synopsis.Amazing!Ignorance is Bliss in some ways I guess.Best,KwanaDecisions Decisions
I’m at one of those awful and awfully exciting times when I’m ready to work on a new project.It always fills me with a little bit of fear and dread, the thought of commitment, especially for my Gemini mind.
Now of course I don’t just have one idea I want to work on, but two that feel semi-good. Neither of them easy. Then out of the blue another sneaks into my head, poof like it’s the cleverest thing in the world (I’m sure it’s not. Sneaky little bugger) like I’ll have time for it. Like I’ll have time for the other two. The truth is I’m no fast writer and the hardest word for me is the first.
Ugh. Decisions, decisions. How in the world does one know which direction to take when there’s that large fork blocking your view?Best,KwanaArt and Fear- Two to Tango
What’s Jack up to? Jack is doing his Monday chill (not that he didn’t chill the entire weekend). He’s all spruced up after getting a quick grooming on Sunday afternoon so he’s nice and clean and has a fresh new haircut. What more could a dog want?
Lately, I’ve been in a strange head space that I don’t like at all. Cluttered, crowded and filled with all sorts of things and none of it what I really want. Lots if it putting little and sometimes big roadblocks in the path on the way to my dreams. Quite a bit of it all just necessary parts of life.But I have to wonder if some of it is just plain old fear. Fear, the ultimate life blocker. Freaking fear and his sister worry, they both suck and hang over at my place like annoying relatives that don’t know when they’ve overstayed their welcome.
I saw this video of Elizabeth Gilbert author of Eat, Pray, Love, which I loved, a while back and shared it with friends. I recently watched it again over at the blog Make Under My Life and was once again moved so wanted to share to here.
Happy Monday! I’ve got some work to do and some folks to send packing. How about you?
Best,
KwanaFunny Filler
This is just total filler because it’s 12:45 AM and I have no words left and can’t promise you any for tomorrow morning. But I really like this Heinekin ad and didn’t even notice it until the DH pointed it out to me. Very funny.
For all my writers out there so I’m not leaving you completely wordless I’ll borrow a few from Julia Cameron since I’m currently re-reading The Right to Write. This is from the Chapter on Mood.
“Being in the mood to write, like being in the mood to make love,is a luxury that isn’t necessary for a long term relationship.”Best,
KwanaPlot Light
Howdy Peeps! Good day to you all.Check out this chandelier that I spied on my trip to the MoMA with PVE. Isn’t it wild and don’t you love it? I sure do and can’t get it out of my wacky head.
It’s by German designer Ingo Maurer done in 1997. The “Zettel’z is a grand chandelier where the Bohemian crystal drops are substituted by scribbled paper notes from some incurable romantic’s desk. The light shines through the paper mobile. In this work Maurer plays with traditional approaches to chandelier manufacture, using precious and semi-precious materials.”
“The truth is found between the lies”I like to think of it as a great plotting tool. Wouldn’t it be a fun way to plot out a story? You can arrange and rearrange the scenes while letting the light shine through to show you the way. Just be careful to not get burned!
Best,
KwanaMoody Blues
What’s Jack up to? Jack is being Jack, up to his usual antics. He was mad at me for walking out on him the other day so what does he do? He rips the plastic edge off the trash bag that was hanging over the can. Yah, I know I should have tucked it better but… meh!
I’m in a mood. Just a mood. It was bound to happen and honestly it happens way more often than you my lovely blog readers think. I’m mostly always in a mood. It’s just me the up and down Gemini. I mask it well. By the time you read this post the mask will probably be in place. I’ll be getting my allergy shots and taking all six of them like a champ or I’ll be onto holiday food shopping with Nana up at Costco and even smiling while waiting on the crazy long lines.But as I write this I’m over the economy and folks using it as excuses to dog out good people. There are even commercials now that say buy our car and we’ll cover you if you lose your job. Ugh. Way to mess up my TV watching.
I’m over this crazy art word game that I play where you pour your soul out and then wait on a few to tell you if you rate or not. Now I have no one to blame but myself for this since I come from the world of fashion design where I did the exact same thing with the same amount of angst. It must be some sort of strange validation need I have or this God awful need to create and want to be paid for it and it deemed good. Ugh again.I’m over smiling through it and patience and “one day.” Because while all this smiling and patience and waiting must happen, life still goes on. Wrinkles come. Hair turns grey. Kids grow. Bills mount. Hips spread. Stairs crack. Patience thins.Told you I was in a mood.And please no need to say cheer up. I’ll just growl at you, but with love. Because in the end I know I have things to smile about and be thankful for yada, yada, yada…
But today, today is the day for The Mood.Now aren’t you glad you came to see the happy writer today?Anything you’re over right about now? Feel free to vent here. Seriously break free and vent. Comment away! Enjoy.Best,
KwanaWhat A Lady!
What’s Jack up to? Jack is full of energy today. All I hear is tap, tap, tap as he wanders around the house his nails tapping in the wood floors. I have no clue what he’s up to and honestly I don’t want to know. I’m sure it’s trouble.
Last night I had the pleasure of attending the debut of Lady Jane’s Salon. Lady Jane is a new monthly romance reading series held at Madam X in Soho. It is the brain child of Authors Maya Rodale, Hope Tarr, Leanna Renee Heiber and Ron Hogan of Beatrice.com.Admission was 5.00 or a gently used romance novel. The reading was for a great cause: Share the Love which is an organization that collects gently used romance novels and passes them on to non-profit organizations that provides assistance to woman in transitional periods of their lives. For more information on share the love your can check out their website at http://www.share-the-love.org/.This month’s readers were Hope Tarr and Andrea Pickens. Both did a fabulous job and launched the series off in a most romantic way.
And the best part was I got to connect with lots of my writing buddies and blog friends. Here are a few pics. Sorry about any blurriness. All taken with the Blackberry and shaky hands.
The founders: Hope, Ron, Maya, Leanna
Andrea Pickens
Leanna, Lauren Willig, Elizabeth of Scandalous Women
Sarah Tormey and Elizabeth
Katie of Babbling about books, Chapter mate Stacy and Barbara Vey of Publishers WeeklyNext month my RWA/NYC chapter mate, and New York Times bestselling author Lauren Willig will be reading along with Jenna Peterson. If you’re in town come and check it out the first Monday of the month. Don’t forget to bring a book!
Best,
KwanaSuper Monday
So this was the best part of the Superbowl for me, apart from the snack-o-rama at my house. That was pretty cool too. But this Macgruber commercial just cracked me up. BTW I still don’t fully understand football. Sorry DH.
This ad was my DS’s favorite. It’s a total boy ad but so funny. The best is that it was created for only 2 thousand dollars by a couple of guys who won a contest as opposed to the 2 million dollar ads. I love that.
Another Monday and I’ve got writing and workouts on my mind. My writing has been going too slow for my taste and I seem to get distracted by the slightest thing. It’s like, “oh look, shiny!” Not really, it’s just life has been super busy. But what else is new? I can’t believe it’s already February.
I’ve also got to get back on course with the old D-I-E-T. I’ve been just awful. No excuses there. Notice how it’s so easy to fall out of a good habit and way hard to give up bad one. No fair, huh?
What’s doing for your week?
Best,
KwanaWhat Makes A Story
On my current reading list is a Christmas gift that was given to me by one of my critique partners. As a matter of fact she gave a copy to each of us in our small group with the comment of something like, “this book is making me miserable so I thought you all had to have it too!” Sweet. This is why I love my critique partners and wouldn’t trade them for anything. She did back it up with, “don’t get me wrong, it’s making me miserable in a really good way.”The book in question is The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller by John Truby.
Here is a blurb: “If you’re ready to graduate from the boy-meets-girl league of screenwriting, meet John Truby . . . [his lessons inspire] epiphanies that make you see the contours of your psyche as sharply as your script.”—LA Weekly. John Truby is one of the most respected and sought-after story consultants in the film industry, and his students have gone on to pen some of Hollywood’s most successful films, including Sleepless in Seattle, Scream, and Shrek. The Anatomy of Story is his long-awaited first book, and it shares all his secrets for writing a compelling script. Based on the lessons in his award-winning class, Great Screenwriting, The Anatomy of Story draws on a broad range of philosophy and mythology, offering fresh techniques and insightful anecdotes alongside Truby’s own unique approach to building an effective, multifaceted narrative.
Now, I’m just beginning the book and am only up to step three. I’m horrible at finishing writing books. It’s a strange block with me or maybe they are just hard to get through. The only one I did do start to finish was Stephen King’s On Writing. He even made a writing book interesting. Go figure.
But so far this book has me with its talk about The Dramatic Code which says: character change is fueled by desire. Truby steps away from the classic 3 act structure of most stories. He promises you’ll enjoy the creation process as you follow his 22 step program then in the very next chapter on premise he challenges you to: Write something that may change your life! Gulp. Sure I’ll get right on that. And then he gives this little tidbit: 9 out of 10 writers fail at premise. Yeah, it’s a real upper. Tons of enjoyment there.
But I’m up for the challenge. I just adore my friends. Misery, company and all that.
So tell me, what makes a story good for you? Can you pin it down? Is it a feeling? The Characters? The flow? The tension? The suspense? Please share or give examples of your favorite stories, either books or movies. Don’t be shy now.
Best,
KwanaP.S. – Scroll down for Top Chef talk. Warning spoilers ahead.
