2008: My Year in Review

2008 was a landmark year in my life. It was a year of transition: ends, beginnings, redefinitions, and, most of all, getting back to the core of who I am and what I want out of life. Looking back over my tangible accomplishments, it's also been a fairly productive year.

1. I wrote or rewrote five screenplays totaling 489 pages and 93,500 words.
2. I wrote five pieces of short fiction and one free-verse poem, totaling 10,300 words.
3. In the last two months of the year, I wrote the first 90,000 words of a novel.
4. I wrote some nonfiction essays and brainstormed/planned a number of others.
5. I wrote 88 blog posts (make that 89, I guess, including this one).
6. I started jogging, kept coaching little kid soccer, and took fencing lessons.
   
7. I participated in and won ScriptFrenzy for the first time and also served as the municipal liaison for the Kansas City area.
8. I participated in and won NaNoWriMo for the fourth time.
9. I reached my goal of reading 24 books a year for the second year in a row.
10. I watched 151 movies and learned a lot about the art of cinema.
    

Beyond the accomplishments, the year sneaked in a number of valuable lessons as well. Here are my Top 3.

1. Appreciate the present, and do not cling to what is not so. I've learned to better appreciate the ebb and flow of life. Things come and go, and we cannot control it all. There is beauty in every phase of life, even in the moments of melancholy.
2. Do something every day that moves me one step closer to my goals. Even if it's something minuscule, I try to do at least something. No day should be wasted.
3. Most importantly, I made the decision to be authentically and unapologetically me. After many years of trying to fit the mold of what I thought I should be, I realized that what I should be is, simply, me. It has been the most freeing decision of my life to date.

So, with 2008 behind me, I've set up some goals for the coming year. I like to call them New Year's Initiatives rather than resolutions. Eleven worked well for 2008, so I'm going with that for this year, too.

1. Finish the first draft of Fairytale Redux.
2. Adapt a novel for the screen.
3. Edit/re-write SoS.
4. Rewrite M. Valentine.
5. Write a stage play or a comic book script for ScriptFrenzy 2009.
6. NaNoWriMo 2009.
7. Visit a place I've never been before.
8. Read another 24 books.
9. Finish a themed short story collection.
10. Write another spec screenplay.
11. Film a short.
    

So, cheers to 2008 being over, and here's to 2009 being the best year yet. Happy New Year, everyone.

NaNoWriMo 2008: Week Two

Well, I've survived to the middle of Week Two. Monday was little sketchy as my normally bionic immune system threatened to fail me, but it seems to have repaired itself (as bionic things are prone to do) for the time being. I very rarely get sick, but about once every four to five years, all the bugs I've managed to avoid band together and launch a full-scale attack, plunging me into a pit of sickly despair. I'm about due for another pants-kicking, but I'm just hoping my system can wait for the reboot until at least December.

That being said, once I broke through Sunday's bout of writer's apathy, the writing began to go fairly well. And by well, I don't mean I'm writing especially great material here, but the staring contests between myself and the blank page have become relatively short. I'm to the scenes which were the jumping off point for this entire story, so I've been riding the wave of joy at being able to write these bits that have been playing around in my brain for about a year now. If all goes well, I might just be able to break 50k by the end of the weekend, which would be a speed record for me. Of course, I'll still have another 25k to pound out after that landmark, but it's always nice crossing that 50k hurdle.

I will now break from this NaNoWriMo update to tell you a short parable.

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who lived with her two little dogs in a typical suburban neighborhood house. After spending the evening hours writing at a coffee shop, she came home parked her car in the garage, lugged her computer, her purse, two bags of write-in materials and her coat into the house.

She then poured herself a small glass of red wine and settled onto the couch to unwind by watching House, after which she put the dogs in their kennels and went to sleep. At 11 p.m., this was a bit late for her, since she would have to be up by 5 a.m., but such is life. The caffeine in her system made getting to sleep a bit difficult, but by the time the calendar flipped the page, she'd slipped into a light sleep.

Half an hour later, she was abruptly awoken by the barks of her two chihuahuas downstairs. Vaguely annoyed, she waited for them to stop, figuring they'd heard a noise outside and would quickly quiet down. But instead their barks grew louder and more ferocious. She started to grow concerned. She saw a flash of light through her blinds. Lightning? Was it storming? She peeked through the side of the blinds. She felt the rush of dread accompanied by adrenaline. There were two dark figures in her backyard. One was coming down the deck. They had high-powered flashlights.

The woman scrambled out of bed to her cell phone, which was on the floor a few paces away. Crouched in the middle of the room, she could see lights flashing under the door. Were they in the house? What if they'd seen the light from her phone from underneath the door? She couldn't hear them in the house, but what if they were and what if they heard her if she called the police? The stream of thoughts jetting through her brain was stopped by a loud rapping on the front door. Shaking, she pulled on a T-shirt over her tank top and walked down the hall, down the stairs and to the front door.

Through the window, she could see a police officer standing on the front stoop. She pulled open the door, stumbling a bit as it stuck and then released.

"Hi," she said, her voice unsteady.

"Hi, ma'am. Your garage door is open, and we just wanted to make sure everything was all right."

"Oh..."

"Are you all right?" the officer asked, obviously not realizing the trauma he'd just put the woman through.

"Yeah, I'm OK. Just a little freaked out. My dogs were going nuts and the lights..."

"Oh, sorry about that. We didn't mean to scare you."

"No, it's OK. I appreciate it. I didn't know the garage door was open. Thank you."

"No problem, ma'am. Sorry to wake you."

"It's OK. Thank you."

The two officers left the stoop and walked to their car. The woman closed the door behind them and then walked, almost zombie-like, and opened the door into her garage. Sure enough, it had been open. She pressed the button and watched it close. "Holy shit," she muttered to herself, shaking her hands in an effort to get rid of the jitters. She spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, the combination of the adrenaline and remnants of caffeine combining forces to ward off sleep.

The moral of the story: DON'T FORGET TO CLOSE YOUR GARAGE DOOR, ESPECIALLY AT NIGHT!

While I was obviously rather traumatized, I was pretty impressed by my two pint-sized dogs who rose to the occasion rather magnificently. Obviously, when you hear "long-haired chihuahua," you don't think "guard dog." But they did a great job of alerting me at least. And, while the officers' approach might have been a little gung-ho (they circled my house, checked all the doors, including the one on my rickety deck, and were about to try to find out how to phone the owner), I do appreciate their dedication to attempting to keep me safe. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'll be checking at least twice to make sure my garage door actually get shut from now on. Oi.

Recap: 3 November 2008

As predicted, HSM3, Zack & Miri, and Saw V took the Top 3 spots. Here's your Top 10.

1. High School Musical 3: Senior Year ($15 million)
2. Zack and Miri Make a Porno ($10.7 million)
3. Saw V ($10.1 million)
4. Changeling ($9.4 million)
5. The Haunting of Molly Harvey ($6 million)
6. Beverly Hills Chihuahua ($4.7 million)
7. The Secret Life of Bees ($4 million)
8. Max Payne ($3.7 million)
9. Eagle Eye ($3.4 million)
10. Pride and Glory ($3.3 million)

Everything Else

My movie-watching this past week was pretty dismal. The first half of my week was spent in a mad race to finish my script before sending it off to the BFSC. I managed to watch about half of Creepshow on Thursday before I got caught up in Thursday night television.

Friday I met up with a good friend to discuss The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I'd roped her into reading for the selfish reason of having someone with whom to discuss it. We had a good time being book nerds before she went off to a Halloween party and I went home to hand out candy to a whopping 12 trick-or-treaters. I spent most of the night prepping for the NaNoWriMo kick-off party/write-in on Saturday. (By the way, Sam, if you read this, the cupcake was marvelous.) At midnight, I kicked off the month by writing about 1100 words and went to bed.

Sunday was a pretty crazy day, and thank God for the extra hour of sleep. I got up and pushed to the 10 percent completion mark on the novel, and then I went to coach our last little kids' soccer game of the season. After that, I went straight to the Sunday write-in at which I ended up being the ONLY attendee. So, here's my plea: If you ask me to specifically schedule a write-in at a time and place you specifically request, PLEASE show up. I've got plenty of NaNo spirit, believe me. But I don't generally drag all my write-in crap, including a huge poster board declaring the writing goals and progress of my fellow WriMos, if I'm just going to be writing alone.

The upside is that I did manage to break 10,000 words at my solitary write-in. So, I went home and worked out (because an overworked brain sadly does not burn many calories), and then as a reward I settled down with some dinner, some leftover Halloween candy, and a nice big glass of wine to watch Love Actually. Which by the way has officially become my second-favorite Christmas movie after the untouchable The Muppet Christmas Carol.

This morning I'm feeling a little melancholy for the following reasons:

• I miss screenwriting. I've fallen in love with the medium over the past year, and I'm bummed that I won't get back to it until December at the earliest.
• I don't have a large chunk of hours I can allot to writing today because I've got my day job and then freelance editing job this afternoon/evening.
• My spine feels like it's melting into my back, which is not pleasant. I've also been fighting a nasty headache-causing knot in my neck/shoulder for several days.

So, if anyone would like to contribute a little metta, prayers, or back/shoulder rubs to my cause, I'd much appreciate it. I think I just need to get into a groove, and then I'll probably be OK. And if not, Dec. 1 is only 27 days away!

Seven Facts Meme

I'd managed to escape this meme for quite some time, but it finally caught up with me. Thanks, Danielle.

The idea is to share seven facts about yourself and then to tag five people.

Seven Facts about Elizabeth Ditty

1. During parent-teacher conferences in the fifth grade, my teacher told my parents that I was "eccentric" and "dared to be different." I've never lived it down, though I have learned to embrace it.
2. One of my favorite movies as a child was The Last Unicorn, which, if you've ever seen it, explains a lot about me, I think.
3. Between college and my current job, I spent five hellish weeks working in the Tire & Lube Express department at Wal-Mart . I was placed there despite knowing next to nothing about cars. But the upside is I can now help you pick out tires and I can take an educated guess at what kind of oil your car uses.
4. I've played just about every major sport (major as defined in the States). Soccer, softball and basketball were the biggies, but I've also taken tennis lessons, and I participated in swim team for a number of years in my youth (breaststroke and fly were my specialties). I was a tetherball champion in elementary school. I've never played on a volleyball team, but I know the basics. I even did a year of cross country in seventh grade. I also took an introductory epée fencing class in August, and I hope to continue fencing after NaNoWriMo. I've never really played football, but I think I get a pass on that, being a girl and all.
5. A few months ago, I started speaking to my dogs in French. This is mostly an effort to keep my level of French somewhere between elementary and conversational. I think it also makes me a little weird (see No. 1).
6. I love to cook and bake. I love trying out new recipes, and I love feeding people. But I hate cleaning, so I rarely partake in this hobby these days.
   
7. I really enjoy having intellectual conversations with people, be it about books, movies, religion/spirituality, politics, philosophy, whatever. I tend to be fairly quiet in group settings, but if you get me one on one or in a very small group, I'm much more talkative. I love to debate for the sake of learning about people and hearing new perspectives, and my goal is often just to get people to think rather than to convince someone that my stance on any given issue is correct.

Phew, that was harder than I expected. Now to unleash it on other unsuspecting bloggers...

1. Lee Horne
2. Matt
3. Joselyn Martin
4. JenWriter
5. SarahCentric

Have fun!

Recap: 22 September 2008

Well, I wasn't too horribly far off. I pegged the top 3, just not in the right order.

1. Lakeview Terrace ($15.6 million)
2. Burn After Reading ($11.3 million)
3. My Best Friend's Girl ($8.3 million)
4. Igor ($8.0 million)
5. Righteous Kill ($7.7 million)
6. The Family That Preys ($7.5 million)
7. The Women ($5.3 million)
8. Ghost Town ($5.2 million)
9. The Dark Knight ($3.0 million)
10. The House Bunny ($2.8 million)

What I Watched:

• Ghost Town (3 stars): The first act of the movie was pretty slow. We get it: Ricky Gervais' character is unlikeable. Let's move on. The real fun comes when he has to start actually interacting with people instead of just avoiding them.
• Amélie (4 stars): I saw this several years ago and was unimpressed, which leads me to believe I've become increasingly quirky over the years. Amélie is delightfully whimsical.
• Hedwig & the Angry Inch (4 stars): I feel well-versed in the world of rock movies now that I've seen Almost Famous, Spinal Tap and Hedwig. Hedwig might be the most well-rounded of the three in the way it blends sentiment and satire. And it had the best music, too.

In Other News

• I finished what I'm calling my gamma draft of MUTE this weekend. Cheers to me.
• I'm in the midst of planning my 2008 NaNoWriMo novel, nicknamed Fairytale Redux. I attended my first pre-NaNo KC write-in last night. I think my level of planning might be slightly anal-retentive compared to the other WriMos there. Which, if I'm being honest, is really no surprise.
  
• Speaking of NaNoWriMo, the site is getting a makeover for its 10th anniversary. When it relaunches on Oct. 1, my campaign to ensnare new participants will intensify. Be prepared.
  
• I'm taking suggestions for a Netflix project, in which I explore the filmography of a screenwriter, director or actor. So, suggest away.
• I'm going to start doing this with all my Netflix flaps (thank you, Lifehacker).

My Life in Snapshots

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Came across a fun meme-ish type thing today over at Janet's blog and thought I'd join in. Above is my life in keyword-defined pictures according to the questions below. Here's the how-to:

The Concept
1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, and pick one image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

The Questions
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food? right now?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. What is one word that describes you?
12. What is your flickr name?

It's a fun way to spend 15 minutes, and it yields something pretty, which is never a bad thing. Have fun!

Blogging and Other Failures (aka Recap: 7 September 2008)

So, I've kind of been slacking on blogging lately. It's not like my content here is ever all that amazing, but still, I try to keep up with it usually. I have three excuses.

1. August and early Sept. movies sucked for the most part (as evidenced by the fact that this past weekend was the slowest movie weekend in five years). Sure, there were a few bright spots (Tropic Thunder; Bottle Shock, which only made it to limited release; some might argue Pineapple Express, though I would not), but all in all it's been a pretty dismal five or six weeks.

2. I have been swamped at work. Horribly, soul-suckingly, terrifyingly swamped. On Friday, I worked 11.5 hours and ended in the same place I started, if that's any indication. Sadly, the swamp does not include scanning projects at the moment, which means no movie-watching for me. So, on top of seeing next to nothing at the theatre, I hardly watched anything on DVD either. I've had the same three Netflix DVDs for an embarrasingly long time because I just haven't had the energy post-work to commit to two hours of concentration. I usually sneak in blog posts while I'm at work, too, but the workload simply hasn't allowed that recently.

3. I haven't been writing. I seem to blog more when I'm in the midst of a writing project, and I'm currently awaiting feedback on my beta draft of MUTE. I should be getting back into editing on that this week, but I don't have another writing project scheduled until Nov. 1. However, once I've finished up MUTE, I'll be able to focus completely on planning my 2008 NaNo novel, which will hopefully breed some ideas for blog posts.

So those are my excuses. Not good ones, really, but that's life. That being said, I did get my Netflix queue moving again this weekend, though, with my viewing of The Last King of Scotland (4 stars) and Children of Men (4 stars). Both lived up to the hype and were excellent. I'd been fearing LAST KING would be rather boring, but it actually zipped along quite well, and James McAvoy had me glued to the screen. How did he not get nominated for an Oscar for his performance? Crazy Academy. I mean, Forest Whitaker was great and his Oscar was deserved, but McAvoy really carried the film in my opinion.

Oh, and in case you're curious how the worst movie weekend in five years was divided up, here you go.

1. Bangkok Dangerous ($7.8 million)
2. Tropic Thunder ($7.5 million)
3. The House Bunny ($5.9 million)
4. The Dark Knight ($5.7 million)
5. Traitor ($4.7 million)
6. Babylon A.D. ($4 million)
7. Death Race ($3.6 million)
8. Disaster Movie ($3.3 million)
9. Mamma Mia ($2.7 million)
10. Pineapple Express ($2.4 million)

To put that in perspective, The Dark Knight made $155.3 million on its opening weekend. This weekend's Top 10 made a combined $47.6 million, which is about 30.6 percent of TDK's take. Ouch.

Box Office Predictions: 25 July 2008

Today is a landmark occasion in the history of my life. Last night, I got to see Mulder & Scully on the big screen for the first time ever, and for the first time period since The X-Files ended in 2002.

I didn't become a die-hard X-Phile until after the first movie, Fight the Future, had left theatres. I'd always had the impression of the show as humorless, procedural and, frankly, boring. Of course, I'd never actually seen an episode, so I'm not quite sure where this idea originated.

On vacation with my family in Florida and tired of the searing temperatures on the beach, I retreated to the couch in the condo and happened to catch the movie on one of the movie channels. By the time Mulder, after having dragged Scully up on top of the roof, popped a sunflower seed into his mouth and drawled, "What are we doing up here, Scully? It's hotter than hell," I was hooked.

The dry humor, the themes of faith vs. science, belief vs. logic, the undeniable chemistry between Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny... The show was like heroin to me. Within six months, I'd caught up completely with the previous six seasons and was happily enjoying the seventh.

At the height of my X-Philia, I could tell you the name, season and episode number before the opening credits rolled on any episode. I can also tell you what season you're watching just by Scully's hairstyle. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that, on my two-week trip to France (my first trip out of the country and without my family), I have no recollection of taking any photos of my family, but I did take with me a screenshot of Mulder & Scully from Fight the Future. Such was the intensity of my love for (some might say "obsession with") The X-Files.

To this day, there is still only one episode I have not seen: Season 9, Episode 15, entitled "Jump the Shark." There's a reason I've not sought out this episode, and I won't spoil it for those who don't know what happens, but I know it'll be a very sad day when I do finally watch it.

I'll admit my off-the-top-of-my-head knowledge has slipped a bit in the years since the show ended. My love for the series, however, has not. And that's why I was first in line to see I Want to Believe last night. While I completely acknowledge that it's not a phenomenal movie, I loved it, and no one can convince me that love is unjustified.

That being said, I don't see there being any way it's going to overtake The Dark Knight at the box office this weekend. I am hopeful it'll muster enough momentum to take No. 2, because I would be thrilled to see another big-screen outing for the franchise. The other wide release this week is Step Brothers, which I think will lose out to Mamma Mia! for the No. 3 spot.

Official Predictions:

1. The Dark Knight
2. X-Files: I Want to Believe
3. Mamma Mia!

Lessons Learned

It's been a slow writing week for me, both with this blog and my screenplay. I've been house-sitting, which means I've been taking care of five dogs and two cats belonging to my family plus my own two dogs. That's nine animals to one human, if you didn't do the math. All of which means I've not had much time or energy to devote to much else.

Despite that, I have managed to learn a few things this week:

1. Cats like to leave their caretakers gifts from time to time, but they are not very good at discerning what their caretakers would like or use.
2. Barbecue tongs will do in a pinch for removing dead birds from your front step.
3. There are things more awkward to purchase from retail stores than feminine products.
4. Sometimes a day filled with good conversation with a friend is all it takes to make things seem OK again.
5. Letting go of expectations is difficult but beneficial for emotional well-being.

On top of all that, while it wasn't a great volume of writing, I did manage to get out of a rather difficult scene which should make it easier to be productive tomorrow night. Stay tuned tomorrow for Box Office Predictions.