How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

I'm in the process of editing one of my books, one of the final edits before I send it out to a third party editor for fresh eyes.  This is the edit when I make sure that the plot hangs together and the emotional beats make sense.  It's also the edit when I remove all the words I use too often out of laziness or habit or some combination of both. This is my list of words: 1.  That .  This is a big one.  I cannot stop inserting "that" into sentences that don't require it.  (See the second sentence above.  Sometimes, "that" is necessary and important grammatically, and sometimes it's necessary for the rhythm of the sentence, and sometimes I'm doing it because my fingers insert it without me even thinking about it.  Most of the time, I can just delete it, but the trick is finding it in the first place.  (Thanks Find/Replace!) 2.  Some reason.   For some reason, I insert "some reason" into sentences when really what I need to do ...

I fell out of the habit of blogging when Real Life (TM) happened to me, and perhaps I'll get into the details down the road, but for now, hi!  How ya been? More to come...

One of the bands I totally love is My Chemical Romance. I've loved them since the first time I saw the video for their song "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)," which looks like a movie trailer for the best revenge of the nerds video, ever. Take a look: That is a great video. And it didn't hurt that the song was just as great--a fresh and angry take on being abandoned by someone you thought really liked you. That song, their breakout hit, was on their second album. Their third was the epic The Black Parade , which deviated from the emo rock template and was both bloated and grand. Everything about The Black Parade was big. The songs, the videos, the tour, and the post partum depression that followed it, which is why it took four years for them to make a follow-up album. The album -- Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys -- came out last Monday, and is...well, from a hard rock emo band like My Chemical Romance, it's a surprise. A wonderf...

Last week, Steph Bowe wrote a post about how she is not a fangirl. She's a fan of things, of course, but she's not obsessive. And it's a little embarrassing that I, a grown adult, am being out-matured by a 16-year-old, but there you go. Because I'm totally a fan girl. It started when I was 12, with a band, and then there was a book (and it's author), and then there was another band, and then a tv show, and another tv show, and now there's another band. I'm not one of those fan girls who falls in love with whatever's popular at the moment; in fact, the things I have fannish love for are about 50/50 split as to whether they're generally popular or not. But there's usually something. And just like Steph can't explain why she's not a fan girl, I can't explain why I am one. Why do I spend hours of my life engaging with a cultural artifact that doesn't engage back? I've flown across the country, waited in line for hours, suf...

1. This weekend, I went to see Burlesque with Cher and Christina Aguilera. It was AWESOME. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a good movie, but it was hilarious, and campy, and had snappy dialogue, and Cher sang twice and Christina sang about a hundred times and the amazing thing that saved the tiny burlesque club from destruction is totally not the amazing thing you think it's going to be, and yeah...AWESOME. If you like Cher and/or Christina Aguilera, you should totally go see it. 2. When I am 69 years old, I want to look like Cher. In fact, I'm willing to look like Cher now. 3. Lately, I've been watching Law & Order UK , and it's fascinating to see the familiar cases from the original Law & Order remade from an English point of view.* The English legal system fascinates me, and the stories are just as good as ever. The original was on television for 20 years for a reason. ~~~ * And the barristers wear wigs! Really ill-fitting old fashioned ones ...

Recently, I've been seeing a lot of commercials that, superficially, seem to say one thing* but also saying another much less flattering thing. This cracks me up, because it seems like, if I'm seeing these things, shouldn't the people who get paid a lot of money to create the commercials see them, too? But let me give some examples, so you can see what I'm talking about: 1. The Swiffer Commercials Look, I love Swiffer. I use Swiffer (the plain ordinary wipe-on-a-stick ones, not the crazy jet ones). But this series of commercials is way screwed up. Take a look: There's a whole series of these, in which the broom or mop essentially stalks the woman (never a man, notice) who has switched to Swiffer. On the surface, oh, ha ha, the broom and mop are sad that you left them. What a cute-ish commercial! But even if we set aside the fact that the commercial is essentially making light of stalking behaviors (since stalking by a broom is, you know, not very likely), th...

Lately, I've been reading a lot of series YA books,* books that have two or three or four sequels, and I have to say that it hasn't been going so well. Usually, this is what happens: (1) I love the first book. It's awesome and original and the characters are great. (2) The second book is good. Maybe the idea isn't as good, or the characters seem a little stale or something. But it's still a pretty good book, and I'm looking forward to the next one. (3) I read book three and think "really"? and put it down halfway through after skimming to the end to find out who dies. For a while I wasn't sure why I was having that reaction. I mean, these are all different authors, writing about very different topics, so how was it possible that my reaction was pretty much the same each time? Was it ME? Could I be the problem?** Then I realized what was happening--it was the adults. I went back to confirm and, sure enough, in each of these different serie...