So, I don’t really review television on my blog often. I think the last time I reviewed a show, it was the pilot of Glee. However, much like Glee, this new show “Smash” is something I feel compelled to weigh in on. This is especially true, because I have a slight bias to report. This show is not exactly the plot of my novel, but there are a number of similarities. So, I have some interest in it doing well. It would make pitching my book a lot easier.

So, with that bias admitted to, I have to say the pilot interested. Like all pilots it wasn’t exactly subtle, and much of the dialogue felt clunky and trite. I had expected that Megan Hilty (famous for playing the Dolly Parton role in the Broadway flop “9 to 5″ as well as her highly lauded performance of taking over for Chenoweth as Glinda in Wicked) to be miles and away better than Katharine McPhee. While McPhee was one of the two contestants of American Idol I ever cared about (and like Adam Lambert she came in second to someone who appealed to people from the south) I was worried that McPhee’s American Idol performance was some sort of fluke. Her two solo albums had nothing of the incredible voice she presented to the world in the singing competition, but from the first second of the show (where she reprises a few seconds of ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’) it is clear her voice is still excellent. In addition to having a beautiful instrument, McPhee is better suited to acting on screen than Broadway’s Hilty. It is clear Hilty is wanting to make sure everything she does can be read by even the most visually impaired person, like most stage actors, which makes her come across as slightly cartoonish on screen. However, part of the reason for this is the script.

The script writers use McPhee to embody what actors trying to work in New York City are like. At dinner, she makes it clear that she fully understands she is in an industry that is soul crushing. While she is annoyed that someone answers a phone in her audition, she doesn’t cry about it. Hilty on the other hand, who should be thrilled to be having the level of success she is having, cries when she is rejected after an audition. The writing during Hilty’s pity party where she bemoans that she trained to be an actor made me want to turn the television off. I trained as an actor and a lawyer, I am barely able to get work in either world, and while I find this incredibly frustrating, I don’t really feel the need to cry about it.

To give her training credit, Hilty is a true delight to watch when performing. Although I found the “baseball number” incredibly distasteful, I enjoyed her in it. Hilty shines for me most in the final moments of the pilot where she and Katherine McPhee sing a new song “Let Me Be Your Star” while en route to a call back audition. In these last few moments all of my problems with the show completely melted away. The song flows from both of these women in such unique and delightful ways, that I was finally able to see why Hilty was even competition. Hilty’s voice is fuller, bolder, and when she sings as Marilyn, the very essence of that icon seem to flow out of her. McPhee’s voice is not as big, but as a result, her voice feels more nuanced and intimate. This appeals to the idea that Marilyn was more than an icon, but she was also a woman. In McPhee I see a portrayal of Marilyn Monroe that is less about the big moments we know about (although her incredible impression of the JFK Birthday song is pretty much perfect) and more about the fact that Marilyn was also a person.

The final song brings out that these two women are both primed to be an incredible Marilyn, but there is a difficult road ahead of them. For Hilty, she had the pedigree and experience to really relate to what Marilyn had to go through, but to connect to those experiences, she will have to rip down the walls she has erected to keep herself alive in the business. She has to stop “acting like Marilyn” and find the Marilyn within. McPhee, has the reverse problem. In her we see the woman, but not the icon. Can McPhee, who is as green to television as her character is to Broadway, really convince people she is also able to wear the mantle of Marilyn? Can she show us more than Norma Jean? These are absolutely engaging questions for me, and I look forward to seeing them explore them over the next few moments.

So today is Saturday, and even when I was writing a lot, weekends were times I rarely wrote more than a few hundred words. It’s around 4:00 p.m., and I find myself having a strange feeling. Boredom. My brain immediately is thinking “you can’t really be bored. You haven’t been bored in years.” Which is true for the most part, I’ve had a steady stream of traveling, writing, work, and gaming, to keep me quite content for a long time. So knowing I have the time, I think “I should be writing/working on my novel.” This is of course silly, as I have only been away from my 90K word manuscript for a few days. I know I need more time. Still, the compulsion is there.

So now I’m going to figure out something to do, other than write. Still, I felt like posting something, if for no other reason, to use the nice animated image of Bart attempting to get an electrified cupcake.

So as I finished out 2011, I was writing and listening to a lot of podcasts about writing. When I came across a podcast from Nerdist called “Nerdist Writers Panel” One of the podcasts featured a husband and wife writing team (the podcast is about television writers not fiction writers) and they talked about how they have a tagline for each new year. That got me to thinking, what should 2012′s tagline be for myself? I wanted it to be catchy, something I could theoretically design to be on a t-shirt. So that’s what I did.

For me, 2012′s slogan is:

2012

When the novel of my mind

is read in the hands of others

I like having this idea, and if, after a little more work, it looks like this dream is coming true. I plan to purchase the shirt I designed =)

]]> http://kyoske.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/creating-a-tag-line-for-yourself/feed/ 2 kyoske 2012 T-shirt front http://kyoske.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/rough-draft-is-finished-setting-the-timer/ http://kyoske.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/rough-draft-is-finished-setting-the-timer/#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:47:34 +0000 kyoske http://kyoske.wordpress.com/?p=1104 ]]>

So yesterday, I finished the rough draft of my novel. My word count came in at an impressive 91,524. Now some of that will most certainly be cut, but I also have a few notes to myself that basically say “Come back to this” which means I’ll also be adding. I think my novel will certainly settle in nicely in the area between 85K and 100K words.

Finishing was a great way to start the new year, and I decided to make a pretty decent resolution, one that is extremely attainable. I plan to take the next two weeks off from thinking/working/editing/revising my manuscript. During this time, however, I do plan to do something related to the content. In the novel, the protagonist works very hard to get into “leading man” shape. I plan to devote some time out of each day to replicate this process, so that when I am writing about it, I will have a whole new subset of sensations/sense memories to use to describe the process.

Today is the first day I have not worked on my novel, and I have to admit. I never knew how much writing on it, gave me a sense of purpose. I kind of thought any goal would do, and so I decided to work out and job hunt. Yet even with both of these goals on my mind, I still deeply miss working on my novel. I’m sure to some degree it is just separation anxiety, and that I will probably loathe returning to it. Having read over some earlier portions of the book, I know that my work is far from over. Still, it is strange to fill a day without imagining the lives of my characters, who despite being fictional, I have really come to love spending time with over the past year and a half.

So now, I shall turn the 2 week hourglass over, and let my mind focus on other aspects of my life. Something tells me this means another dark period when it comes to blogging, but who knows. Since I won’t be writing 1,500+ words per day anymore, maybe I’ll want to blog more.

So with a fully sketched out outline for an ending, all that is left is to write it. My guide has served me well, and each day I end my writing knowing exactly where I will pick-up. This fact should elate me, I should be extremely happy that the ending is in sight once more, and that I will get there soon. However, while those things to make me happy, I am finding that my ability to tell the story does tend to slow down after I hit 1,500 words in a day. This isn’t a bad thing, as that word count is completely respectable, but now that I know how the story ends, my desire to get there faster has never been stronger. This makes me find writer fatigue far more annoying than before, and while I’ve managed to at least get 1,500 words out every day that I write,  it never feels like enough. December is drawing to a close, and if my hopes of getting most of my editing done in January are going to come true, that means I really need to get my first draft fully completed as soon as possible.

I am aware that over the next three days, I won’t get much writing done at all. I am returning home to AR, which I hope will serve as a good bit of inspiration and rest, as when I come back (on Christmas day) I want to finish the year out on a big note.

Here is hoping!

The scene that was impossible for me to justify where I originally meant to place it, has finally been written, finding a home in an earlier chapter. While it is certainly justifiable, it is also despicable. Even though I knew it was going to happen, and had prepared myself for it, it is hard to let your character do something bad. Granted, if I didn’t, well I wouldn’t much of an author. I met the incredible author Steve Berman, a few months ago, and we talked about a book of his I’ve read several times. He said he is often asked whether he would write a sequel to it (I actually like that he didn’t as it ends so satisfactorily) and he said he couldn’t as anything he did, would just cause the narrator more pain and grief.  At the time, I agreed, but I didn’t fully understand what he meant until today.

Most of the fiction I wrote was short, so the problems never had particularly high stakes, or, if they did, you hadn’t spent pages and pages investing in the character, so readers were still far enough removed that the pain was easier to handle. Now that I’ve written this scene in the novel, I can see that there is still more pain to come, but am also aware that there will be an end to it. That said, it is still incredibly difficult to put my characters through all this, which means my writing has been slower as of late.

While part of me is lamenting the pains for my character, the author inside me is celebrating that I’ve managed to fix what was once broken, and that the path to completion is now clear. I wonder if the reason my first attempt didn’t work out, was because I was afraid to write the truly terrible things that must occur. If so, it is my hope that in the future, I won’t shy away from them. I can see now, that the pain does have a pay off.

I found the idea of beginning the editing process from page 1 through what I have now, too scary to handle. If you’re having similar problems, maybe the method I’ve used will help you. I will report back in a few days to discuss whether this new plan is a success. I have high hopes.

IF i make 11/23/11 my new deadline, the odds of me finishing are good. But I am not certain I will finish early, like say next week. I feel like I need to do something to give myself an incentive to finish. I think 11/23/2011 is my goal, but I will force myself not to play SKYRIM until I have written a minimum of 1000 words that day. If I do that, then I am allowed to play it some. That’s my thoughts on the matter at the moment.

I am happy to report my total word count is roughly 73,000 words at the moment. The document shows over 75K but there are a lot of notes to myself, so I’m assuming 73K is more accurate. I’m excited to finish!

So yesterday I wrote 3,988 words in my novel. This is an absolutely new record for me. It just kind of poured out of me, and I was so excited. I wish I could have hit 4,000, but I just couldn’t finish the last sentence. I wrote it today, but I think that was about it. Yesterday was amazing, but I definitely had nothing left in me today to really write. I am, instead, going to read some more. I have noticed that the more I read the easier it is for me to write. While this is hardly new advice for writers, sometimes I worry my work will be too heavily influenced by things I write. Yesterday, for example, I wrote a line that was so “Twilight” that I had to delete it.  Thankfully, I recognized it, and revised it, to be more in tune with my own story.

I wish this post said more, but it is mainly a nice reminder for myself. That writing can be fun and easy. Since I am wrapping up the book, it has been a much more difficult process. Endings are hard, even when you have them basically planned out. Only a few more days till me 11.11.11 deadline, so lets hope I can crank out the last few thousand words soon