Gas Power

I thought I'd do a redesign of the old blog, the wallpaper is Impossibear from Bravest Warriors. I've been getting into my cartoons lately, something about vivid colours and adorable characters is very stimulating for the brain.

I'm not sure where the months have ran off too. I remember when an hour felt like forever and now they slip away as fast I fall on ice (which is almost instantly; luckily I was blessed with an ass that can cushion such abuse). I sometimes feel like I'm accelerating through life without a break pedal. I'm going through a before mid life crisis people...

But seriously next thing I'll know I'll have children and a mortgage.

Next year I plan on going back to my studies, so I'll have less time to work on my novel and procrastinate with video games and Youtube. I'll be making the most of the next eight months (laying around in my pjs, eating my own body weight in cheese whilst watching shite on Netflix).

Could probably do with some mild exercise after
Christmas and New years to be honest.

Devon x

Criticise Me

I find my writing to be very intimate; it's like taking a private fantasy from your head quite violently and slamming it on paper. Every little detail is a personal preference and every character has a degree of ourselves within them. Our fears and beliefs seep into our work without us even noticing.

This is why I find it very difficult to allow others to read my manuscripts. I have to deeply trust someone to allow them to read the very raw work, to see the silly grammatical mistakes I have programmed in my brain and when I type one word when I mean another. The biggest fear, of course, is criticism. Having someone tell you they don't like it, that it's boring, that they thought it was laughable, made no sense and belongs in the bin.

Let them.

You cannot predict what others will think; denying them the chance to slate it denies them the chance to praise it. Praise is useful, it makes you feel great and motivates you to do more. I'm often surprised by what people think but I always appreciate their honesty. No one has ever said to me my writing is perfect and I know they'd be lying if they did but knowing they like it even with flaws is encouraging. Listening to criticism has helped me grow and improve my story telling skills.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”

 ― Winston Churchill

Or you could purposely write something of low quality,
to meet the low expectations of others.

Devon 

Mystic River - Dennis Lehane Review

There are threads in our lives.
You pull one and everything else gets affected.

This book is not what I expected, at times it's slow and not a lot happens but then suddenly everything happens at once and by the end you realise you're sitting with your back as rigid as a flag pole and you really need to pee.

Almost every character within this book is crafted beautifully, you don't always like them, they don't always say the right thing, and they certainly don't remain the same static two dimensional images you begin with. They sometimes piss you off, make you upset, and at times really fucking furious. 

I don't think I was very fond of any of the characters by the end but I developed a strange attachment to them, like a relative you don't get on well with but still care about. That's why the ending is so poignant. 

The plot slowly unravels itself, it is almost a good two hundred pages in before Jimmy Marcus's daughter's body is found and the reader knows for a long time before that that she's dead. It is at times too slow, I became frustrated and started losing interest but stuck with it and I'm glad I did. Part of me enjoys that the book is not all about the murder and more about the lives of the three men we start out with and everyone whose lives they touch. It's about loss and coming to terms with your less appealing attributes. It questions our idea of justice. It challenges what we consider evil.

Lehane has a way of describing people and places that you can almost imagine the smell, dirt under nails and in hair, small unattractive facial tics and involuntary twitches. You are drawn in by the realism and stay for the answers.
I greatly recommend this book.

Now the Film

In 2003 Clint Eastwood directed an adaptation of the novel. I seen this film before I read the book, I seen it years ago though so quite a bit of it was lost to the fog of my memory banks. I enjoyed the film the first time I seen it, it inspired me to read the book; granted I took my time to get around to it.

Left to right: Dave, Sean and Jimmy.
Someone please explain how a ginger kid grows up
to be a dark haired Sean Penn with grey temples.

Watching the film now I appreciate the amount of dialogue taken straight from the book, the attention to detail events and almost recreate the characters without too much altercation. There are however small things that now bother me about the film. Almost all of the subtle humour and wit of Lehane is gone, granted Clint Eastwood's films usually do focus on the serious.
Fond moments in the book are completely altered in the adaptation and some characters lose their likeability in exchange to put emphasis on another aspect of their personality. Annabeth for instance is simplified into a cold, 'hard' woman; which is partly how she is described in the book but on occasions in the film where she rejects her cousin Celeste, I can't help feel angry that she is now two dimensional, that had they been true to the book Annabeth would have moments of weakness, have need of her family and appreciate their love. It's funny, when I bought the book the woman that sold it to me asked if I had seen the film and commented on the Ice Queen that took the place of Jimmy's wife.

Annabeth isn't the only victim to lose the majority of their emotional range. Sean is a complex character in the book that loses a lot of his emotional integrity in the film. In the film he's a man that is separated from his wife but remains loyal. In the book he's a man whose wife left him and struggles with the knowledge that he might have a child and that he might not want that child. Sean also has a lot more anger and regret in the novel, regret for never having a beer with Dave; for not being a better friend and anger that Jimmy is exactly the same "crazy, lunatic, fucking psycho piece of shit" he was when he was a kid.
Dave is the most interesting character in the book, you like him, you pity him, you're sickened by him but you understand him. The film leaves out a lot of his sweet nature, instead of being that person who tries too hard to be your friend he's shy and awkward. He is simply awkward Dave and the Boy. Not Dave who grew up and has a kid and a wife who he loves deeply and the Boy who wants to furiously have his revenge on the world. The film only glimpses Dave the wolf. This I feel is a crime but having not read the book the first time, I was satisfied so for the film alone it is not a flaw.

For a number of reasons I feel the film does not have the same poignancy that novel does, but that is the usual way and I still really enjoyed the film. I think there is only one more thing that bothers me though... 

Left to right: Jimmy - Sean Penn. Sean - Kevin Bacon.

I'm under the impression that there is a small minority of women who find Kevin Bacon sexy, and an even smaller minority within that minority who would describe his voice as "like whiskey and wood smoke". I'm well aware that it's ridiculous to expect perfection but I'm a woman with a fetish for detectives and part of me wanted an actor to play Sean that could live up to the quote from our friend Dave, "Fuck Sean. And those eyes of his. And that voice. And the way you could see the women in the kitchen all but drop their panties when he came in the room". Kevin Bacon leaves me bitterly disappointed. Sorry Kev.

Devon x

Doubting Me

Doubting I'll ever be a musical sensation or a world renowned brain surgeon is just being realistic but doubting myself in general is becoming a real problem. Before I became ill I was confident and enthusiastic about near enough everything I tried; now there's a constant tiny doubt living in the back of mind with an obsession with cheese on toast and a television turned up to max volume.

It's a constant distraction and it's effecting my writing. I doubt my basic writing skills, my imagination, my ability to create convincing characters and environments. I doubt my own voice. What if I'm not great? What if attempting to write another novel is like me trying to climb a mountain all by myself? What if I never see the view from the top?

Then I realised all that is irrelevant, that everything I do is good enough for me; that climbing a mountain doesn't happen overnight. I may not be the greatest writer ever born, of my generation or even of my fucking star sign but that's not what I want to be, I want to be the author of my own stories, be the creator of my own characters and worlds; even if they are considered contrived by some and my name is mentioned in the same sentence as the word "Hack".

It could be worse, one morning I could wake up and regret never trying because I was afraid I'd fail, that I never gave myself the chance to be great because I gave up.

Pronounce that for me 

Devon x

Sensationalize Me

Since my last post I've been pottering about my house muttering angrily to myself, cursing the existence of others and the media; drinking tea and writing my novel like a true recluse. That might be a slight exaggeration but you get the idea.

I've genuinely been avoiding the News because it isn't worth the emotions it attempts to pry from my rib cage; it's been a long time since I'd gladly swallow contrived bullshit. As I've gotten older I've become more passionate about things that offend my morals and intelligence.
What offends me so much that I actually want to yell at the television like a mentalist is the shameless sensationalizing. Especially making a spectacle of tragic events. Focusing on the loss of a few individuals because their pain is the most interesting and enough to hold the world's attention for that bit longer than another's would. Pretending that our compassion extends that far and that we aren't just nosy, attention seeking, greedy creatures.

I asked myself if I'd have any interest in the world's events if the mass media didn't portray it so, if they left out all the human drama and conjecture that makes it more like a story, something we can relate too. The honest answer is I don't know, it would depend on the specific facts and if in any way it affected me. I do know I will always find the ogling of the private matters of an individual, of their family and their community heinous.

It's at this point I'd like to say that I am aware that it is not just journalists that sensationalize tragedy, that TV dramas and novels do the exact same thing. The vital difference for me is that they are fiction, no matter how closely based on actual events we all know what we're picking up or switching on is an exaggerated bias piece of drama. The characters aren't real people having their privacy invaded willingly or otherwise. We can dispose of them when we've had our fill, put them back on the shelf and forget about them because that's where they end. The lives of real people don't end when the cameras turn away, their pain doesn't end as soon as something equally as tragic occurs somewhere else but we all find it just as easy to eat them up and spit them out.

Curiosity killed humanity

I'm still reading Mystic River, taking my time with it so I don't scoff it like a donut and realise it's all gone. I've also got some new games that look interesting so I have a busy few weeks ahead of me. Oh, I watched Revolutionary Road last night, every time I see it I want the book, to see if it's hopelessly empty too.

Devon x

Indecisive Lazy Me

It's been a big week for me but I've still managed to do a lot of writing, I even like some of the drafts I've written. Paranoia is starting to loosen on my back, doubt is such an ugly thing. I have sadly been feeling quite ill lately, I'm constantly exhausted and that obviously impacts my writing and attention to grammar, not that grammar is really all that important anymore these days. 

I've always debated with myself "Which is more difficult, First Person Narrative or Third Person Narrative?" The only conclusion I've come to is that Second Person Narrative would either read like a letter or a self-help book, the latter being very unfortunate. I usually write in first person but that lacks omniscience, which is a very handy tool but you gain intimacy with the protagonist, perceiving the world as they do. Considering my story I wonder if it would benefit from many different perspectives. For this novel I feel Third Person suits it better but I might change my mind because I'm indecisive like that.

I'm happy with my characters so far though, I usually get rather attached to them and any that I don't get the boot. Harsh but necessary, having characters around that you can't even muster hate for are just dead weight. 

Probably what I look like ill.

Also this week my significant other bought me Mystic River by Dennis Lehane, I'll let you know what I think when I'm done and I'll even watch the film and do some comparing if it isn't too much of an effort for lazy me.

Devon x

Time Well Spent

Time, there's never enough and much of it is spent sleeping, if you're me. This month I'm starting a new project, my first novel wasn't good enough for me, so I'm starting another. This blog will be full of how much I hate everything I do, probably. My significant other says I'm hypercritical of my own work, I think hes bias.

Anyway this project is really exciting for me, it's something completely different from my last novel and needs a lot more research and imagination. I have two test readers at the moment, having to deal with my very rough work but they have  encouraging feedback which I really need. 
I realised I was spending too much time worrying about what strangers would think of it and not if I was enjoying it anymore. I write for myself mainly, I can't imagine anyone who is as fond of dark subject matter as me or likes long dialogue with plenty of colourful language. 
This time I've also created my own universe, which is something I was never brave enough to do. I think I've always been paranoid I'm not good enough to create every aspect of a characters world right down to their societies common beliefs. I have discovered it's actually quite fun. I mostly enjoy changing common attitudes our society has, to make myself feel better mostly and have my revenge!
Seriously though I'm going to have to improve my self discipline and avoid the Internet unless it's research otherwise I'll end up on Youtube or Facebook procrastinating like I always do when theres something important to be done. Sometimes I have to tell myself multiple times to stop doing something before I actually will stop, it's a serious problem. I need someone to stand over me and give me treats for doing work, life would be so rewarding then.

I'll keep you posted on how things go.

I'm glad someone is excited

Devon x