Here’s the new video blog post by Peter Jackson and Co. on the making of The Hobbit films. This is the second of two focused on the location shooting that dominated the second stage of principal photography. It is mostly a video postcard of New Zealand, which is not a bad thing. New Zealand is a beautiful country that I’d love to visit someday. We get to see a lot of the cast moving from place to place and generally having a good time. We get to see more of the elaborate, massive amount of work that the crew does in advance of each shoot and to keep Peter Jackson on top of what’s happening on the production anywhere that he’s not presently standing or sitting. We learn a bit about the catering crew and what it’s like to feed all of those people. It finishes with a segment that shows the hazards of filming around rivers that tend to rise a lot after storms.
Interesting feature piece on NPR this morning about a “resurrected” musical version of Stephen King’s first published novel, Carrie. I had no idea that a howlingly awful musical of it had been done in the 80s. Of course, that’s when a lot of howlingly bad horror novels were being churned out by publishers chasing a buck trying to find the next Stephen King (there ain’t one, folks), so it was appropriate for the period.
The original musical folded after just 5 performances, losing all $8 million of its production budget. (Somewhere, the backers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark are wishing they had it so good.) Interestingly, the impression is that the production was so awful for the same reason many horror works fail – they forgot audiences had to care about the characters and the story. It’s not enough to throw blood (fake or otherwise) around. Over-the-top grue and screaming is just that – over-the-top. All it does is make the audience/reader regret spending their time and money on this particular bit of misguided “entertainment.” Ok, some people don’t mind grue for grue’s sake and could care less about characters, plot, etc. But they need a hug. Or therapy. Possibly both.
The writers of the musical Carrie, apparently knew this and were sort of embarrassed with what wound up on stage. That’s the risky life of writing for the stage or screen. Unless you’re also directing the work, you have almost no control over what comes out the other end of the creative process. Even then, it’s a collaborative process and there are producers to appease and test audiences involved and…well…I can understand why lots of writers want no part of being involved with the adaptation of their books and stories. Take the check, hope for the best, brace for the worst – that seems to be a common approach.
It’s great to see that the new version is smaller, more intimate, and lower tech. Even better that it is refocused on the story and the characters. I’ll be living pretty close to New York City in just a few months. I may have to go check this out.
( I certainly agree with the below suggestion from Neil Gaiman. And I’m happy to let the world know that I have a wide range of tastes in food and am generally considered a polite and reasonably entertaining companion at table. The below is copied from the author’s blog. )
Please celebrate Leap Year Day in the traditional manner by taking a writer out for dinner.
It’s been four years since many authors had a good dinner. We are waiting. Many of us have our forks or chopsticks at the ready – some of us have had them ready for days. We will repay you by drifting off while the food is being served and then suddenly scribbling something down on a scrap of paper and asking whether or not you think “passionate” could validly be said to rhyme with “cash in it”, then absent-mindedly drinking too much and trying to recite the whole of Clive James’s “The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered” from memory.
Any day when books with my name printed on them show up in the mail is a good mail day. Today, my contributor’s copies for Future Imperfect: Best of Wily Writers 2 arrived with “Aftershocks” nestled inside. They look like this:
I’ll have to check with Angel Leigh McCoy in order to find out whether that’s Rooney Mara or Noomi Rapace on the cover.
On a related note, as a member of New England Horror Writers, let me draw your attention to Epitaphs: The Journal of the New England Horror Writers, edited by Tracy L. Carbone. It is the first anthology published by the organization and was released as a trade paperback at Anthocon last year. Stuffed with over two dozen stories and poems representing a broad range of what appears under the “Horror” big top, the volume recently became one of six anthology finalists for the Bram Stoker Award.
Pretty darned impressive for a first effort.
Intrigued? Want to check out some writers you haven’t read yet? Love the idea of supporting a regional writers organization? All stellar reasons for wrangling yourself a copy.
I’m pleased to announce that I’ve had two flash fiction stories accepted for publication in Daily Frights 2013: 365 Days of Frightening Flash Fiction (Pill Hill Press). ”Things in the Attic” was a spontaneous bit of dark whimsy. ”Mary” was inspired while browsing in The Gruesome Guide to World Monsters. Both were originally published right here on this very blog in 2010, although I substantially revised “Mary” before submitting it to Pill Hill Press. They are pretty wildly different pieces, which is part of what makes it fun to look forward to them appearing in the same book. It will be available in trade paperback, for Kindle, and I’m not sure what other formats. More details as they become available. I do know that fellow New England Horror Writers scribes Tracy L. Carbone and Scott Goudsward have stories in there as well.
Maybe this should have been my Valentine’s Day post…. Nah, too painful.
No, I’m talking about story submissions. Every writer has to decide how many times they are willing to brave (and receive) rejection of a work (poem, flash, story, novel, etc.) before they shelve or circular file it. Lots of writers have the same answer:
Zero.
They never send anything out. They don’t want to. Some just don’t trust their work enough to show it to anyone. Some just don’t want to deal with rejection letters because it will hurt too much or just make them angry. Some just don’t have any interest in having their work published. They are writing for themselves alone, or for a close circle of readers they know personally.
Many others, of course, want to see their work published. A growing number of those writers bypass any chance of having their work rejected and self publish everything. The rest of us may be doing some self publishing as well, but we’re also still pursuing the traditional route of finding markets, submitting work and crossing our fingers (when we’re not typing something new).
So. For those of us in that last group, how many rejections is too many anyway?
It depends. There aren’t really rules, just guidelines. It’s sort of like the Pirate Code. Here are some of the guidelines I’ve picked up and adopted along the way:
Don’t even think about revising a piece until it has been rejected at least a few times. Say, 3 or 5.
Even then, only put the patient back on the operating table if you have received consistent notes about why the editors who read it don’t think it works. If multiple editors are telling you the story opens too slowly, it’s worth taking a hard look at the opening, for example.
However, if you have received only the most formal of form letter rejections (no feedback at all) or, maybe worse, a range of well- intentioned criticisms that don’t create a usefull pattern…best to smile bravely and keep submitting it. Silence tells you nothing. Scattershot feedback isn’t enough to act upon.
10 rejections is sort of the magic number for me. All of my published and forthcoming work was accepted before it received ten rejections. By then, if I haven’t received feedback that I find helpful enough to motivate me to revise the work again, I usually shelve it. A few years will have passed. I always have newer and, I think, better stuff. I’m usually able to let go and say goodbye to an older work by that point.
But not always. I just shelved a story after 20 rejections, a new personal record. I wrote it in 2003 or so. Enough readers and listeners said encouraging things about it along the way that I figured it was just a matter of time. Surely someone would want to publish it. No one did. So far…. Because there’s alway the chance I learn about some new publication or project that is looking for exactly this sort of story. And I’ll happily send it to them.
For the second year running, my family met up with friends to go see a screening of the animated short films that have been nominated for an Oscar. Last year’s crop was great. This year’s is even better. Here’s an overview in the order we saw them, with a peek at each:
Sunday by Patrick Doyon
A pretty honest, accurate depiction of too many kid’s experiences of life on Sunday. You get hauled around to places you don’t want to go because, too often, they’re dull and people just talk at you and jam hats on your head that they knit for you and don’t you look so cute in it and your belly is full of too much food and you want to nap but you can’t because you feel bloated and uncomfortable. Sigh. So you look for magic where you can find it. This was one of my favorites. Quirky and true.
A Morning Stroll, by Grant Orchard and Sue Goffe
The same brief encounter shown three times in three very different time periods as an illustration of how things have changed and where we might be heading ( The zombie apocalypse, of course, but you knew that, right? ). The change in visual style and relative sophistication for each section was interesting. I got a kick out of the comic, yet still gory zombie mayhem. But, ultimately, this one didn’t stick with me.
Wild Life, by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby
( No YouTube clip available. Click the image above to go to the Oscars site to play the one hosted there. )
This one was really good. It’s about a Brit who decides to go off and become a rancher in Alberta, Canada even though he has no idea what to do and seems to take every excuse not to, you know, raise food or livestock or do much of anything else involved with homesteading. He’s too busy taking walks and writing letters home. The visual style is rustic and beautiful. There’s some nice writing and voice work on secondary characters who are interviewed about the odd Brit.
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg
While scanning a flyer about the films in the lobby, this was the one I decided I was most looking forward to. What a great title, for starters. And it was promising a mix of The Wizard of Oz, Buster Keaton films, and Hurricane Katrina influences along with a range of animation styles. I was not disappointed. All four adults in our group voted this one as the best nominee. Rather than read more from me about it, your time is far better spent watching the whole 15-minute film below.
La Luna, by Enrico Casaroasa
This year’s Pixar nominee looks like…well, a Pixar film. It’s clean and beautiful, but haven’t we seen this style an awful lot by now? I, for one, would like to see the studio release some shorts or even (gasp) full-length features that depart from their signature visuals. That said, the film is fun and lovely in its own right. A perfectly pleasant few minutes. But it doesn’t really do anything particularly new or interesting, in my opinion.
After the five nominees, we were treated to another five or so “recommended” films. The standout among these, and the one that the kids in our group all want to win the Oscar (we let them down gently) was Skylight, by David Baas. We adults all loved it, too. It is a hilarious environmental mockumentary that starts out by skewering Wild Kingdom and the other animal programs on PBS that I grew up watching and then moves on to show the audience the terrible dangers created by the hole in the ozone layer. Penguins (and anything else) that are exposed to the additional solar radiation are fried into trussed-up chickens. The film does a good job of building on the humor right through the closing credits. Here’s how it starts:
So, that’s this year’s animated shorts crop. I highly recommend tracking them down. They are currently in limited release in theaters.
There’s nothing like a deadline to motivate you to clean the bejabbers out of your house. In our case, it was hosting our first prospective buyer. We’ll be moving later this year and, while the house is not officially on the market yet, we are informally showing it to interested friends and colleagues.
Because we just cleaned it, now’s a good time to share a few pics of where I do all of my writing. Some people write in coffee shops or libraries or other public spots. I get far too distracted by all of the other people in those public spots. I prefer to work at home, alone in the home office that I share with my wife. We almost never use it at the same time and the layout makes it an easy space to share.
The office is a roughly L-shaped room with the door along the outside of the longer portion. Thus, a naturally divided space. One portion of the “L” is hers and the other is mine. It’s fairly easy to spot the border:
Her side is “Appletree” green. Mine is “Saddle” brown. Taking it a step further, she gets the big windows and natural light on the southern exposure side of the house:
Meanwhile, I’m quite happily tucked under the eaves at the front of the house:
Our realtor laughed when I enthused about the prospect of working in that section. “Of course you want the dark side of the office.” But it’s really more about the focusing effect it creates. I can’t get distracted by what the weather is doing or squirrel fights in the maple tree outside the window. Instead, I’ve surrounded myself with stimulation that works for me:
The desk itself is a converted kitchen table that used to be in my Grandmother’s house. That’s a tin sign poster of Ted Williams I picked up in Cooperstown on the floor at left. The open briefcase on the left side of the desk is a retro, toy spyphone. The small bookshelf at the back holds writing craft-oriented books. The line of bottles beside it are horror, fantasy, and baseball inspired beers. Tacked to the sloping portion of the ceiling is a bit of motivational text and on the wall at right are a few framed postcards and a New Yorker magazine cover that I particularly like. Over on the opposite wall:
This is my main stash of fantasy, horror, and science fiction books. There are smaller pockets elsewhere throughout the house. More baseball stuff balanced atop the graphic novels and old journals at right.
When we move, I’ll be taking over what used to be a toll taker’s office in a historic, 200-year-old house. It will be all mine since it’s in a parsonage and my minister wife will be working in the church office a few dozen feet away. It’s a very different sort of space, with a door to the outside and a woodstove or chimney of some sort and some built-in bookcases. I’m excited to start creating in it. But this space under the eaves has been my wordsmith’s forge for quite a few of my stories, all of my poems, all of my Christmas skits, various essays, and my novel-in-progress. It has worked well for me.
