Back to Business: Glaciers & Writing Anticipation

I've been largely away from keyboards for the last couple of weeks. Despite (unfounded) fears of seasickness, I took my first cruise. With family and friends from Georgetown, I went to Alaska and saw...

Once back on land, we had a dozen people sleeping in our house (including seven kids)--so much noisy fun! And my writing? What writing? A few pages here or there in my journal. A few observations scribbled on paper scraps and stashed in my purse. What I failed to achieve in pages, though, I gained in deep desire to get back to my writing routines...an intensified passion to complete my new novel and send it out the door...and a deep, deep appreciation for the NOW.

As heard on NPR, fact & fiction, and a photo!

Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Lisa & Laura Roecker, Miranda Kenneally and Janet Gurtler at SourceBooks' fantastic GET REAL tour stop at Third Place Books in Washington. Here we are with some other bookish types:

Driving home, I heard an NPR feature about "trackers" - people (often young, collegiate or intern types) who have spent months following political candidates, recording their every word to send back to "war rooms" run by various advocacy groups. There more people scan computer screens in search of errors, contradictions and foibles the candidates have made.  These discoveries become source material for stump speech zingers and media ads showing candidates taking and then reversing positions. Seems to me like thousands of hours, people, eyes staring at computer screens to make this election even more persnickety--acknowledging even less that candidates on both sides of the aisle are also human beings constantly in dire need of sleep and under an inhumane amount of scrutiny.

It's not that I feel all warm and fuzzy when candidates seem to change their policy tunes in response to the whims of their base constituencies. But as a person who every day calls one of her son's by another one's name and is (gasp) subject to changes of heart and changes of position, I wonder at this "tracker" model.

I recently read Cory Doctorow's PIRATE CINEMA, in which he posits that editing together footage from multiple previously made films to form a new narrative is original, is creativity, is art.  And I wonder, are trackers' clipped together soundbytes of politicians mispronouncing words or saying things that could be construed as contradictions "fact"? Or are they, like the works of Doctorow's protagonist Cecil B DeVil, "art" too?

PS: If you're old enough, make sure you exercise the amazing privilege you have to VOTE tomorrow. And, if you've already mailed in your ballot, HURRAH FOR YOU!!!!

On creativity and marketing "mash-ups"

It's almost summer and trailers for blockbusters are flooding the shores of promotional beaches.  Two that recently caught my attention: THE RAVEN and ABRAHAM LINCOLN, VAMPIRE HUNTER. Two icons of literature and history reimagined as forms of sleuths. Still, both movies testify to our culture's (at least the producers of our culture's) reliance on historically recognizable "brands" (yes, I'm calling our former president a brand) to fill movie seats--to yield success.

I know there's nothing truly new under the sun.  At its core, even a new novel tells an "old" story about love or sacrifice or greed--something from those seven deadly topics.  In the writing biz, we pitch in shorthand.  (e.g., you tell your agent your book is HUNGER GAMES meets PRIDE AND PREJUDICE).  Recent Suzanne Collins juggernaut aside, sometimes it saddens me how MUCH film entertainment simply revisits the past and how little really reaches forward to create new worlds, new heroes.  Collins herself cites mythology as one of her inspirations for the trilogy yet her society and characters feel fresh and her social commentary is challenging. The most amazing thing, I think, about Collins and other new-branders, Rowling & Meyers, is that their books were not made into films called SHAKESPEARE'S TWILIGHT or HARRY POTTER VS BATMAN.

GLEE may have popularized the "mash-up" song presentation style, but I'm not sure I dig it for movies. Especially when it feels like all that was done was to take one of those editorial meeting pairings like STAR WARS meets NANCY DREW and put it on the screen, keeping recognizable elements of the titles, while spending insufficient time exploring the validity of the combination to create a work of any cinematic merit beyond special effects.

I'm not saying there isn't room for those quippy AVENGERS (yeah, I liked it!) on movie screens this summer. This isn't a call to action, just a rant.  And a hope. For more films that are a little daring.  A little  less familiar. Even just a little new.