WARNING: Long post about mostly trivial stuff
I’ve still been working on this dime novel thing (which, in the United States, is pretty much dominated by the romance genre, though I hear that action stories are popular in other parts of the world), but it’s slow progress because I’m trying to shift focus to elements I normally don’t describe that much. Plus there’s the length issue. I’ve got to get to 50,000 words minimum and the longest story I’ve ever written was a little over 30,000 words, and that includes a large amount of plagiarized song lyrics. I went to the Harlequin romance website (something I never thought I’d do) and found their publishing guidelines. I didn’t know this before, but they have several different “lines” of novels, each with their own criteria. The basic line (Harlequin Romance) is the one that publishes books as short as 50,000 words. There were actually a couple lines that sounded almost interesting (like Luna or Silhouette Bombshell), but most of them require at least 80,000 words.
In an attempt to solve the length problem, I’ve had to brace myself and actually do some hands-on research. I went downtown to the main library and headed to the romance section, feeling extremely conspicuous the entire time. It was actually kind of funny. I kept trying to grab books off the shelf to look at the backs (hey, if I must read them, I might as well choose something with an interesting setting or subplot), but my arms would not move. It was as if some invisible force was preventing me from touching the books, warning me “Your brain will melt. Don’t do it.” Once I got over that, I noticed that the vast majority of books were about babies. I don’t want to read about babies. I don’t want to write about babies. There were also many, many books about cowboys. I don’t want to read or write about cowboys, either. Some books were about both. I did manage to find a couple that weren’t about cowboys or babies that I felt I could tolerate, although only one was in the 50,000-word territory. At least it proved to be a quick read. It wasn’t that bad, although, from the writing level, I felt like I was reading one of my friends’ stories, though I can’t imagine whose. Chris doesn’t write stuff like that (though it’d be kind of a funny challenge for him to try), and I’ve never read any of Laura’s stories. That leaves Marisa, who probably comes the closest, but tends to be much more introspective and is just a better writer overall. At least I now know that I’m a better writer than some published authors (I already knew that I was a better editor than some people working for Warner Brothers, but I’ll tell that story another day). I tried going over to the Oregon branch library (which is closer to me) to see if they had a better selection, but, as the main library was dominated by cowboys and babies, the Oregon branch was similarly dominated by bosses, mistresses, forced/tricked marriages, and sheikhs (though bosses and mistresses were by far the majority). I managed to find two books that at least had settings or obstacles I was thinking about writing, although both of them were part of the Silhouette Desire line (which has more sex scenes than the basic lines, but doesn’t seem to be the most “X-rated” line out there). If anything, it’s led me to the decision that when it comes to sex scenes, I’ll take the “less is more” approach, because describing it in detail seems to cause people to use really stupid metaphors about everything, right down to using condoms (“He grabbed one, ripped it open and in seconds had sheathed himself and protected both of them.”). There was one line that made me laugh, though: “If they were going to go to war, then he at least wanted some pants on.” To keep myself sane, I also borrowed Memoirs of a Geisha, which I wanted to read before the movie comes out. So far, it's proving to be pretty enjoyable.
Saturday night I went to my high school to see the choir’s musical revue. For those of you who can’t figure it out, a musical revue is a show where the choir and some soloists sing songs from Broadway musicals (and sometimes Disney movies). Sometimes they act out scenes from the musical, but not this year. I had been in the musical revue my first three years of high school, and I wanted to see how things had changed, especially since there’s a different choir teacher now. Now, when I did musical revue, we weren’t spectacular (as Marisa can attest to), but we were decent enough. The downside was that most of the songs we did were from “fluff” musicals of the 50s and 60s (Oklahoma, The Music Man, Guys and Dolls). Nowadays, they still have a lot of “fluff” musicals, but they also get to sing stuff from musicals I like better (such as Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, etc). However, the choir (and, for that matter, the chorale, which didn’t exist in my day and which you have to audition for) just plain sucks. There are plenty of lowlights to share. The girl who sang “Colors of the Wind” just plain couldn’t sing. The soloists for “Luck Be a Lady” and “Friend Like Me” lacked the confidence and stage presence needed to pull off those songs. The emcee (one of the students) was unintentionally funny because he gave his compliments and introductions in the most unenthusiastic tone possible. One of the songs was “I Enjoy Being a Girl” from Flower Drum Song, which they turned into a trio instead of a solo. Cale (the emcee) gave the storyline about how the main character is an Asian-American teenage girl. Unfortunately, the choir has no Asian members (My high school was, and is, about 75% white, 24% Hispanic, and 1% black; Occasionally there will be a Japanese exchange student, but that’s it as far as Asians go), so that introduction just made the song seem awkward, though one of the singers was the choir’s lone black female (I’m not sure if that was intentional or not). Probably the worst number of the night was when the whole choir tried to sing songs from Phantom of the Opera (consisting of the title song and a heavily-shortened “Point of No Return”). It was kind of ironic; while I was on the phone with Chris the day before, he was complaining that he thought Gerard Butler was a bad singer. Say what you want about Gerard Butler. He’s a thousand times better than seven guys in the Cardinal Stritch High School choir. There are several rules for singing songs from Phantom, all of which seem to have been broken in this performance. Rule #1: You have to be able to sing. Rule #2: Americans (myself included) cannot sing the songs from Phantom in our natural accent. You have to put a bit of British into your “a” sounds in order for it to sound right. You cannot sing the phrases “Phantom of the Opera” or “Past the Point of No Return” with the American short “a” sound, because (as clearly demonstrated by the choir), it sends the word through your nose and makes it sound bad. “Circle of Life” (the other number featuring the whole choir) was slightly better, but not much. Same for “You’re the One that I Want” (which featured the chorale). I think the most recent musical they sang from was Wicked (which is a musical that I could be interested in, but I’ve yet to find a good synopsis, and so I’m confused as to which character is the protagonist and which one is the antagonist). They had two girls (both of whom were also in the trio from Flower Drum Song) singing “Defying Gravity.” The girls both sounded like they had good voices, but they were both altos, and, from what I can tell, the song was written for two sopranos, so there was a range problem that hampered the performance because there were several notes that were just too high for them to hit well (my mom says it sounds like a difficult song to sing in the first place). To be fair, there were a few good performances. There was a freshman (a really small kid that my mom did not know) with a VERY nice voice who sang “Bring Him Home” from Les Miserables (and who rightfully received the loudest cheers at the curtain call). There was also a girl who sang “Where is Love?” from Oliver who turned out to be a nice singer. Her brother sang “Close Every Door” from Joseph, and he was pretty good as well, though once again they ran into range issues. The song is meant for a tenor or maybe baritone, and this kid was very much a bass. However, in his case this did not hamper his ability to sing the song, it just sounded weird for a voice that deep to be singing that song.
Okay, this is long enough so I shall go.
), so I dug out my DVDs and watched them. Back to the Future holds kind of a special significance for me, because that was the movie where I learned the difference between actors and characters (I was six at the time, and it took me years to understand what the hell was going on; I understood the time travel part of it, but I didn’t get the subplot). Then, when I was about 10, Sam (who was my best friend at the time) and I took it upon ourselves to act out all three movies in the family room of my house (acting out movies was one of our common pastimes, but this was the big granddaddy epic of all of them), with the movies playing on the VCR, of course. I played Marty McFly, and Sam was Doc Brown. I don’t really remember acting out the first two, but Part III sticks out in my mind, especially the “props.” I remember that for the “bulletproof vest” I stuck a dictionary inside a canvas bag and hung it around my neck. For the time machine itself, we used my dad’s recliner, mostly because the leg rest reminded us of the doors on the car (which makes no sense now, I know). And for the train scene, we basically climbed around the entertainment center and window seat (though Sam had to do considerably more climbing around than I did). Did I mention that I had a very weird childhood?
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