Thursday, July 10, 2008

One down... billions to go

I finished reading King's "On Writing" Tuesday night. Overall, I thought it was a great book. It definitely held my interest and I feel like there were a few pearls of wisdom in there. I'm not a Stephen King reader, but his memoir almost makes me want to go pick up one of his novels. I'm a wimp when it comes to scary things though--the last thing I'd want are nightmares. But we'll see. A few quotes that stood out to me from the last 80 pages:
"Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid or making friends. It's about enriching the lives of those who read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy."

"The rest of [this book] -- and perhaps the best of it -- is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up."
I think my writing lapse the past few weeks is from feeling overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by my move and the pressure that I've put on myself to be some great writer. I'm hoping that it'll go away once I finish a task on my ever growing list. We'll see. Like Margosita pointed out, soon I won't have any choice and I'll have to write. Hopefully it won't be crap. One big thing that I did learn from King's book -- and pretty much knew already -- is that I need to be a better reader. I need to make better choices and I need to challenge myself. Now's the time and grad school will definitely force me to do that.

On to movie news:

Saw Hancock. I give it a C+ to B-. I didn't find it totally horrible as some critics made it out to be. However, it could have been a lot better and some of the camera work annoyed me, but other than that it was entertaining. Not as good as Iron Man, not at all. Probably falls in line after the new Incredible Hulk movie, which I'll give a B.

I love summer movies. Next up: Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The Dark Knight, X-Files, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Warrior, and possibly Meet Dave (if I feel like watching a possibly very stupid Eddy Murphy movie) and Journey to the Center of the Earth. I'll probably see most of these solo since E isn't into any except for the new Batman. That's cool though. I wonder if I should revamp my movie choices as I will my reading choices. Probably not--one sacrifice at a time. I'm not giving up my movies just yet.

I'm glad that "Dirty Dover" has a movie theatre: Spinelli-Strand Theatre. Hopefully it's a good one--I'll be frequenting it a lot, I'm sure.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

So, the "leader" of the "writer's group" I was part of for all of it's first 60 minutes HATED On Writing which only makes me want to read the book and love it. She seemed rather distressed that King makes it out as "simple" in some sort of [parphrased] if you're good and you keep writing you'll get published. She seemed to think this was false. Seemed, nothing -- She TOLD us that it "takes a whole lot more than that!" Sigh. She held onto a lot of negative energy.

And I kinda wanna see the Batman flick b/c I was in chicago when they were shooting footage last summer/fall. Saw a bit of the production crew and every so often a cop cruiser would go by that said GOTHAM CITY POLICE and I would do a double take ;)

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