Writin' Writin' Writin'

Too busy to write a Perfectly Positive Monday post. Actually making progress on my chapter nine. Maybe. Sort of. So, blah blah blah, positivity, blah blah blah Supernatural, Veronica Mars, new computer, lip gloss. question no one answers. THE END! See you next Monday!

Analyzing The First Kiss

I watched that cool video/clothing ad that had pretty strangers kissing. I really enjoyed analyzing the body language. As a romance writer, it was a fun exercise. And as the Veronica Mars movie is tonight, I thought I'd take a moment to analyze Logan and Veronica's first kiss. Yes I know it's fiction. Yes I know this level of scrutiny is unhealthy. Hush. Don't spoil my fun.

Over the course of the first 17 episodes you watched the gradual melting of ice between these two people who thought they hated each other. Then came a sort of truce.Then she tried to help him find his mom. Then he cried in her arms when he had to accept that his mom was dead. Then he punched a Federal Agent when he thought she was in trouble.

All of that led to THE KISS. I know I've posted this video before, but I'm a romance junkie and this is one of the best first kisses on television. I don't fully know why it was so awesome and why I feel the need to watch this scene over and over again. I think mostly what I love is their body language.

There are a lot of emotions packed into the roughly two minutes of screen time you see here. Very few words are spoken but much is said. Veronica's hesitance stepping from the hotel room. The complete not-okay body language she has because she's shaken up. The tiny smooch she gives him, on a whim and the look of embarrassed vulnerability on her face after she does it. But what always gets me the most is the absolutely gob-smacked look on his face. A quick peck and you could see all the Tetris pieces falling into the right order for him. Like life suddenly made sense. And then he swings her around and just kisses the snark right out of her. Swoooooon.

Anyhow, I'm shipping Veronica and Logan so hard. I don't care that he's like poison for her and he's a complete jackass. I love him. I love her. I need them to get together. So be prepared. Put in some ear plugs around 7pm. Because if those two kiss, I will be squee-ing so loud, you'll hear it three states over.

What's your favorite on-screen kiss? Care to analyze it as well? Leave detailed analysis in the comments :)

Perfectly Positive Monday #5

In the spirit of positivity, I will try (and sometimes fail) to post something positive and true on Mondays. Because Monday is the day you need positivity the most.

It's another glorious Monday. It's not below freezing. It almost seems like Spring is here. Yay!


Writing Life:

I just need to add a few lines to chapter seven and eight. Then I can move on and figure out how to rewrite nine. I've rewritten it a number of times and it feels... I dunno, too soon. It's a great scene but it's in the wrong place. My favorite thing I've written in Chapter nine is this:

             She picked up the book next to her feet and played with the edges of the pages. “Tell me about your life, Conor. Got any dirty secrets or illegitimate babies?”

              His head snapped up. “Uhm, no.”

          “That's boring. Let's try something else. Are you into any of the following?" She began counting off on her fingers. "BDSM, Clown fetishism or toe shrimping?”
     
             Flushing an adorable shade of pink, he took a long time before responding. “I’m not even sure what two of those things are. But I’m going to go ahead and say no to all of them.”

             “Good good," she leaned toward him. "Now that I’ve warmed you up with my famous charm, what are doing these days? For a job?”  

 I think it's my goal to mention as many sexual fetishes/positions I can, in one novel :D

The Rest of Life

Season four of Archer is on Netflix so life is officially decent.

The best thing was getting my Android fixed. For two years I've had problems with my cell phone. I took it into the phone store and they were like, "Bummer, want to look at a new one?" It started acting up again so I went in to look at a new phone and the very nice guy behind the counter was like, "First you need a new battery. Also, it's no wonder you hate Droids now, you have model X. That is the buggiest, worst Android ever made. It needs to be updated but its so buggy you can't update it online." So he took my phone away for a half hour, updated the OS on their computer and gave me a new battery, all for free. Now it's like a completely new phone! Seriously, the look of the desktop is different, the texting is totally different.It's awesome.

That  saved us a lot of money. Which is good, because my poor little 2.1Ghz desktop PC is dying. She makes weird wheezing sounds and quit running Sims2 altogether and Minecraft is running like an arthritic old lady in a sack race. So we ordered a custom desktop PC last week and it cost quite a bit more than I wanted to spend. But we are getting a BEAST with a lot of ram, a  faster processor, 2TB  hard drive, graphics card with 4G on board memory. It's sweeeeet. Should be here by the end of the month.
 

Shit I love:

Archer's Krieger. He's not an actual doctor but he is dangerously unstable and has access to millions of dollars worth of lab equipment. He just wants what any clone of  Hitler would want; to tape bum fights for his own sick pleasure, make genetically modified animal versions of himself and test highly suspect drugs on his coworkers.

Finally got around to watching Season 2 of Sherlock and I'm sad I didn't do it sooner. The sheet scene just killed me. 

 My new skin care routine for my sensitive, combination skin is working! I took all the elements of Clinique's 3 step line (which I'm way too cheap to buy) and researched dupes and/or better products. I settled on Cerave Foaming Facial Cleanser (which has rave reviews from actual Dermatologists online), Simple Soothing Toner (the ingredients list was spare and mostly natural), Garnier Moisture Rescue Gel-Cream (which is wonderful) and Cerave PM Facial Lotion that I use on the dryer parts of my face because its too much in my T-zone.

While I was at it, I bought some Cerave Moisturizing Cream for my alligator legs and it's working wonders. I'm really impressed. I have some kind of Eczema or something on my legs and they always feel painfully dry and look scaly, but right now, they just look like good ol' pasty Michigan legs with no scales at all.

So what brings you joy this fine Monday?

IWSG: Outline-Induced Narcolepsy



IWSG

1st Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writers Support Group. It’s a blog hop where you post about the joys and difficulties of being a writer.

I’m struggling a bit with editing my WIP. I’m a pantser by nature. I wish that I weren’t. But I have a little-understood disease called Outline-Induced Narcolepsy. It’s quite serious. As soon as I set pen to paper or fingers to keyboard in an attempt to write an outline, interview characters or summarize my novel, my eyes glaze over and I pass right out, which has led to another serious condition; Qwertytis.

With my current WIP I’m using Microsoft OneNote (because I’m too cheap to buy Scrivener) to help me organize my work. I love it! Outlines bore me to tears, but I like making character profiles and town maps. I wrote out all the scene snippets that I want in the story; which is new to me. I’m usually a linear writer. I start at the beginning of the story and write in order with no idea what’s going to happen.

But oddly, being more organized hasn’t helped at all. With my last WIP I stalled out at chapter 9 because I kept re-editing the beginning and couldn’t move ahead. Guess where I’m stalled out with this one? Chapter 9. I’ve written bunches of scenes for later in the novel but nothing that will move this part of the story along. I finally had an idea, but it required a bit of re-writing to make it work. I had been trying to use MS Word’s track changes feature for anything that needed fixing so I can go back and work on it later, but this is major stuff and I sort of need to fill in the gaps to make sure it’s going to work. So now I’m writing ahead and I’m writing behind and I’m not getting any of the middle done and I’m somehow in the exact same place I was when I completely pantsed my previous WIP.

What the eff?

Perfectly Postitive Monday #4

  In the spirit of positivity, I will try (and sometimes fail) to post something positive and true on Mondays. Because Monday is the day you need positive thinking the most. 

I have insomnia. This post is coming to you at 5:26am, because I haven't slept a wink. So I'm a little cranky.Now on to the mother effin' positivity. 

 Writing Life...

Last month I reached an absolute impasse with my novel at chapter nine, because I forgot something that I learned from my writerly hero, Jennifer Crusie:
  

Internal conflict can help describe character arc but it can’t move story. External conflict moves story. Internal conflict is just a character staring into space, thinking hard.

From chapter nine on, everything I wrote ended up being for a later point in the book.  My characters had chemistry and history but they also had nothing to fight for. Which gives them nothing to lose. Also my hero is too nice.

So I started weaving in a plot point that's been debated in my writing group. My characters were BFFs since childhood. Then at sixteen, Adelia hit it and quit it, for lack of a better phrase. So it's fourteen years later and I think my hero is still a bit angry. Not roaring, alpha male angry. But still holding onto that pain and resentful of her suddenly appearing. My group felt like this wasn't believable or empathetic. Usually I bow to the wisdom of the ladies, but in this case, I'm disagreeing. So rewrote the initial confrontation between the hero and heroine and upped the ante by having him not be Prince Charming. He's conflicted. Which still isn't plot, but it's getting somewhere. So yay! I'm calling it a win.

The Rest of Life...

• My coworker bought me a flying pig from the greeting card store that dances to the Cupid Shuffle because I she knows I collect flying pigs.I cradled it like a baby and made everyone watch it dance. 

• Re-watched season six of Supernatural and discovered that its not as awful as I remembered, provided you fast forward through everything except Soulless Sam being an oversexed sociopath. Which is fun to type and even more fun to watch. 

• In February, we paid off our credit cards and started saving for the down payment on a house!

• It's March now so winter has to be at least half over. I'll take it. 

Shit I love

Kelly Clarkson's song, Chivas. It's a love letter to whiskey and a hate letter to an ex-boyfriend. Magical.

Ben & Jerry's Karamel Sutra Ice Cream

The books that kept me company the past couple weeks.

Soulless Sammy

What makes you joyful on this fine Monday?