My God, It's Raining

So, it’s been a while since I posted, but I have an excuse. Lots of work suddenly cropped up, and I had to do it.

I know, I know.  Cool story, right?

Anyway, we’ve been filling what little spare time we have with running round the garden making enthusiastic noises at the chickens (they ignore us, they still go mad for raisins) and watching our LoveFilm movies.  Have to use up our monthly allowance, or it’s not worth having!

I know it’s had good reviews and people have been recommending it to me, but I wasn’t bowled over by Moon.  Sam Rockwell, who I normally love irrespective of what he’s doing (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is great, and you should go watch it), didn’t look particularly comfortable in his role. It felt more like someone repeating lines by rote than actually acting and the fairly slim running time (about 90 mins) felt more like a solid two-and-a-bit hour slog.

Wow. Linking that paragraph up, I’ve just seen the IMDB changes.  When did that happen?  It looks like the iPhone app version of IMDB now…is that a good thing?  I can’t tell.  Being human, I instinctively loathe change and want to kick off about how great the old IMDB template was, but the more sensible portion of me says I should give it a chance.  It’[s not like I use it for anything other than cross-referencing actors whenever Lisa asks me, “oh, what else has that guy been in?” and I can’t answer her.

We also watched The Lake House, which I have actually seen before and yet still managed to sit through a second time.  It’s not a desperately bad movie by any stretch of the imagination.  If you turn off your brain it’s a reasonably produced movie, albeit a touch unsatisfying – the dramatic punches are heavily telegraphed and rather weak compared to things like The Notebook, a movie Lisa refuses to watch because she knows it will make her cry.

Finally, we saw Stranger than Fiction, which I was so sure I had posted about that I had to search the blog twice to make sure I hadn’t already.  Have I posted about it somewhere else? I just don’t know. I can’t find it, so I apparently haven’t…and yet it feels like I’ve written everything I’m about to write already.

Anyway. It’s a Will Ferrell movie, in which Ferrell is the surprisingly restrained straight man, a dopy, plodding-through-life numbers geek who doesn’t see anything beyond the next day’s work at the office.  Obviously he can’t go on this way, and fate takes a hand by linking his life with the ongoing work of a famous author, played by Emma Thompson.  Unfortunately, she writes tragedies, and Ferrell is apparently doomed to an imminent death by an implacable narrator who he can suddenly hear.

Will Ferrell isn’t a great actor.  He’s good, with the odd moments that verge on great within a fairly limited range, and it’s a wise decision on the part of the writer and the director to keep him well away from Thompson, who seems hell-bent on acting the living shit out of what screen time she gets.  As disparate as their talents are, it works on the screen, with Ferrell’s deadpan demeanour slowly cracking as he embraces a life he did know know existed.  Thompson’s journey is a little less direct, but she’s more than capable of ping-ponging believably between highs and lows, between mania and depression – and the director is wise enough to treat them with a light touch.  One pivotal point for her character occurs off-screen, and the scene begins with a stoically bemused Queen Latifah picking her way through the debris of the tantrum it has precipitated.

I could go on about it for ages. It really is good, and worth renting along with …Dangerous Mind.

Right. That’s enough waffling for today.  I’ll post tomorrow or Saturday about the Great North Run.

So, this month’s theme is the Seven Deadly Sins.

Auld Mahoun’s Lament

The boss threw me out. Ideas above my station, apparently.

I might have hit rock bottom, but that hasn’t dulled my spirits any.

Some day I’m going to show him. I’ll show them all.

People keep telling me I can’t do it, that I’m destined for failure.

They might even be right.

Guess I’m just a glutton for punishment.

And all of a sudden, it’s Friday. I can’t believe how quick the week has been, and it’s not like it’s been a particularly busy week.

I got my number for the Great North Run in the post. I am number 37116, which means I’ll be starting waaay back in the pack in amongst the walkers. This does not bode well for a good time. My brother (who’s about 10,000 places ahead of me in the numbers) is also vexed over his allocated place and has suggested we see about getting ourselves bumped up the order a bit so that we can actually run the race.

On the writing front, I recently got some very good (and very severe in places) feedback on my work-in-progress. Notable issues were with the structure and voice, but neither of them is completely insurmountable and there was enough good feedback for me to feel like it’s actually worth keeping on with the project.

What I am doing, though, is pretty much re-writing the whole thing from scratch: moving from 1st person to 3rd, introducing a second POV, cutting large swathes of backstory and removing one character entirely. Also the biggest twist of the story is going to be delivered up front. I think it will be a lot easier second time round, although re-typing almost 100k worth of work with a change in viewpoint is going to be challenging in and of itself.

Since I really don’t want to have to do it a third time, I’ve been writing up a scene index and detailed synopsis so that when I do sit down to write it I’ll know exactly how what I have got fits into where I want to go with it, and if something doesn’t work I can alter it at the synopsis level without having to write it all out again first.

It’s great, because up until now my writing has existed in a bubble – I’ve had no direction as to where I’m going wrong or how to improve beyond the odd flash of insight from my own reading experience. It’s refreshing to have someone go “right – here’s where you’re strong, here’s what needs work” and I can only improve from it.

So, yeah. Back to work, I guess.