Skip to main content

Monday Miscellany

1. You may know Julia Stiles from the fact that she's a pretty famous actress whose been in a bunch of stuff (like Save the Last Dance, for example). What you may not know is that she has a blog, and it's pretty interesting. She doesn't post very often, but her stuff is usually worth reading and she seems really cool.* You can check her blog out here: You Know My Steez.

2. I tried last year to start a one sentence journal, where you write a single sentence a day, but it just doesn't work for me. I keep forgetting to write in it for, like, weeks at a time. I'm much better at writing my three paragraphs a day (as recommended by Bryan Garner). For some reason a bigger committment works better for me. But Leah Dieterich's blog--where she posts a thank you note a day, sometimes to things that you wouldn't normally think of as being grateful for -- is awesome.

Some recent favorites of mine include:

Dear Neon Yellow Highlighter

Dear Future

See you when I see you! Hee!

3. Even cut for television, Aliens is still a really scary movie.

4. I am re-reading In the Woods again, and even though I know how it ends, I'm still tense reading it. That's a good book, y'all.

5. My dog is recovering from her encounter with the German Shepherd. She may be able to go cone-free this week, which would relieve a great deal of guilt on my part. You don't know guilt until you see the sad face of your Greyhound in her cone right before you shut the door to go to work.

6. Donna Gambale posted over at the First Novels Club about the coolest punctuation ever, the interrobang. Take a look:



That? Is some awesome punctuation right there.

~~~

* By cool I mean that she seems like someone I would want to hang out with -- she references David Foster Wallace, y'all! -- so...your definition of "cool" may vary.

Comments

Donna Gambale said…
Thanks for sharing that Julia Stiles blog! I'm such a big fan of hers, and I love what she posts.

Popular posts from this blog

Monday Miscellany

1. I've been watching old episodes of The West Wing on Bravo lately, and have come to the conclusion that I love the character of Sam Seaborn. He's smart, he's earnest, he's a good writer, and he's played by Rob Lowe. What's not to love?* 2. I just bought the cutest jacket at Ann Taylor Loft. I know you care, but it's not every day that one can find a white denim jacket with styling reminiscent of Michael Jackson and a tailored waist. I'm just saying. 3. NaNoWriMo proceeds apace. There is no way that I'm going to be able to keep writing at this pace after this month is over, but I'm on track to finish. It's an interesting project...in some ways the speed is freeing and in other ways it's extremely limited, as to make the word count I have no time to go back and revise. 4. Alien and Aliens are amazing movies. Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection ? Not so much. 5. This week's Glee characterization inconsistency watch: Rache

Jay Takes A Stand

Moonrat, still at Editorial Ass, is making me think a lot lately. She did a recent post here about sexualized violence in print ads, and connected the dots to sexualized violence in books and other media, which got me thinking about how I treat girls and women in my books. To be clear--I'm a feminist. I believe in equal pay for equal work and reproductive choice, and the whole ball of wax. I'm not going to go into detail about all that here because, frankly, there are people out there whose blogs are dedicated to that kind of thing (like Jezebel *) and they do it way better than I ever could. But that's my political orientation, in case you care. So when I was writing The Book, it was very important to me that my female protagonist S did not fall into any of those "heroine needs saving by the hero" tropes that so many books for teenage girls do. Sure, there's something very "romantic" about the hero swooping in and rescuing the heroine, right?

Most. Favorite. Person. EVER.

I've been a regular reader of Lynn Viehl's blog for almost a year now. She's an (incredibly) prolific Sci Fi/Fantasy writer with a zillion novels out (you know, approximately). She's also a really generous author--she spends a lot of time talking about her process, and the publishing business, and most recently ran the Left Behind and Loving It blog workshops for people who didn't go to the RWA con. Seriously, her blog is an invaluable resource for writers looking for a pragmatic, yet encouraging, voice about publishing. She also gives away a TON of stuff. She's always offering prizes for things, which is awesome. Recently, I won a "goodie bag" for commenting on a post (that's all I had to do--comment), and it just arrived in the mail. "Goodie Bag." That's an interesting phrase, right? Suggests something cute and delicious, but not too filling. Like, I knew there would be a couple of books in it, and I thought, like, a coffee