movies

Adaptation vs. Original

One of the movies I watched last weekend was The Fall Guy, a movie that says a lot about Hollywood today — not necessarily within the movie itself, but in the concept behind it.

I really enjoyed the movie. It’s essentially an action romantic comedy. It hits all the rom-com beats, but in the context of some pretty ridiculous action sequences, like the declaration of love during a chase with things blowing up in the background, or the big “misunderstanding” happening because of an attempted kidnapping that turns into a chase and fight scene. The cast is clearly having fun and well aware of what movie they’re in while still managing to play it perfectly straight. It’s pretty much the perfect popcorn movie or date movie. I laughed out loud several times.

But it’s also a sign of how utterly terrified Hollywood seems to be of anything original right now. Every movie has to be tied to or based on something else. It has to be a sequel, a remake, based on a book/movie/comic book/videogame, etc. In this case, the movie is supposedly based on the 1980s TV series The Fall Guy. I watched that series. I don’t remember much about it because it’s not all that memorable. It was the kind of thing that was fun to watch, but as soon it was over you forgot that you watched it.

But the movie actually has almost nothing to do with the series. There’s the title, the name of the main character and the fact that he’s a stunt man, and two of the stars of the series show up in cameos that have nothing to do with their series roles. The TV series was about a stunt man who worked as a bounty hunter in between movies. He usually used his stunt skills to bring in the fugitives, like fancy driving or fighting, but sometimes rigging something like a stunt as a trap. As I recall, a lot of episodes began with what looked like an action sequence with our hero in grave danger, and then we’d find out he was filming a movie stunt. Later in the episode, that same stunt would be key to bringing in the fugitive.

The movie is about a stunt man who got scared away from the industry (and everything else) when he was badly injured in a stunt that failed. Now he’s being encouraged to come back to double once more for a toxic action star who likes to pretend he does all his own stunts, and the director of the film turns out to be the woman he ghosted after his accident. Things get complicated when the star disappears, and the stunt man needs to find him to save the movie for the woman he loves.

The premise and the stories are so different that if they’d changed the name of the movie and the main character, they could have made this movie with no credit to the TV series without getting sued. The fact that the character is a stunt man isn’t enough similarity. The creators of the original series could have watched this movie without having a moment of “hey, this looks like our series.” The series was a hit at its time, but it’s hardly a classic. I’d totally forgotten about it until I heard about the movie. I don’t think I ever saw it in reruns on cable. I think it may be on one of the free streaming services, but it didn’t get any kind of big revival from streaming. In all my time on TV forums, I’ve never seen anyone bring it up. I don’t see what the benefit was to tying this movie to the TV show. It may actually have turned off more potential viewers than it attracted. It doesn’t have a huge fan base that would be lured to the movie, but there are a lot of people who are turned off by the remake fever and who won’t go see something that’s a remake of an old TV show.

I’d be curious to know the story behind this — was there ever an original idea for a movie about a stunt man that couldn’t get made until they linked it to an old TV show? Are they so afraid of not being linked to something else that they wouldn’t make a high-concept movie about a stunt man restarting his career without it being a remake of something, even if that was a nearly forgotten TV show?

I’m not against all adaptations. I often enjoy movie adaptations of favorite books. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by some — I remember sneering at the idea of basing a movie on a theme park ride, but the Pirates of the Caribbean series was really fun (I’ve never been on the ride, so I don’t know how much it had to do with the movie. Was it yet another case of a movie that could have stood on its own without the tie-in and had little to do with the thing it was supposedly based on?). There have been cases of remakes that were better than the original when there’s a reason to remake it, like improved technology or a change in society. But I’m getting tired of the “Hey, you liked this thing, so here’s another version of it!” attitude when it crowds out everything else in the market.

movies

The Promise of the Premise

First, a bit of news: Audible has bought the audiobook rights for the first two Rydding Village books, and it looks like they’re planning to release in late January. It will depend on how well these do whether or not they do any other books.

Meanwhile, last weekend was a Despicable Me kind of weekend. The fourth movie was on Peacock, but I couldn’t remember anything about the third one, so I decided to watch that one first. In case you haven’t been bombarded by the product marketing from these movies, particularly the Minions, the gist of the series is that a supervillain who’s actually a decent guy deep down inside needs kids as part of his complicated evil scheme and adopts three girls from an orphanage, which ends up turning his life upside down so he’s no longer a villain. In the second movie, he meets a ninja-like super spy and gets married.

It turns out that the reason I couldn’t remember the third movie is that I hadn’t ever seen it. Nothing about it was familiar, and I didn’t get that, “Oh, yeah, this,” burst of realization that I usually get when I’m reading or watching something I don’t remember but that it turns out I have read or seen before. That movie is pretty forgettable, even if you have seen it. A week later, I can barely remember it. In that one, both Gru (our villain turned hero) and Lucy (his wife) lose their jobs in the Anti-Villain League after an operation goes wrong. When Gru hears from a twin brother he didn’t know he had (it’s a Parent Trap situation of each parent taking a twin, except for the part where they end up at the same summer camp), the family reunion seems like a good idea, except the brother is keen to learn how to be a supervillain from Gru, and Gru thinks he might be able to work with his brother to take down his enemy so he and Lucy can get their jobs back, but he doesn’t want his brother to know that he’s not really a supervillain anymore.

The thing that I like about these movies is the underlying sweetness. They’re about family bonds, whether by birth or adoption. Lucy is a good stepmom to Gru’s adopted daughters, not at all a wicked stepmother. She’s trying to figure things out because she’s not exactly the maternal type. Gru loves his family and is elated to be reunited with his brother. You expect the brother to be a rival, but it’s not a competition. But the execution of this plot is pretty blah. Even the Minions aren’t all that interesting or fun.

The fourth movie has a really fun premise: Gru and his family have to go into hiding after his nemesis escapes from prison and is bent on revenge, so they have to blend into a bland upscale suburb under fake identities. Unfortunately, it doesn’t use this premise at all, which is frustrating. I loved the idea of seeing this Eastern European-ish former supervillain and his quirky superspy wife, plus their eccentric kids and a few Minions, trying to blend in with posh suburbanites and their country club lifestyle. Talk about a culture clash!

In the Save the Cat screenwriting structure, the second quarter of the story is called “Fun and Games” or “The Promise of the Premise.” If you take the core premise of the story and list the things you expect to happen, this is when most of those things happen. You’re playing with the concept as the characters test the waters of the situation they’ve found themselves in. They usually cross some kind of threshold and enter a new situation at about a quarter of the way through the story, then things get really serious and make a turn at around the halfway point, so this part is about exploring the new situation. Most of the stuff in a movie trailer tends to come from this section of the movie, since it gives you an idea of what the movie is about without giving any real turning point spoilers.

It’s not exactly a huge mental exercise to come up with a list of things that can happen with Gru and his family in the suburbs, but they don’t really do any of it. Almost all of the situations they find themselves in come from the setup of their hiding being utterly incompetent. For instance, they give Lucy the cover job of being a high-end hairstylist — something she has no training or experience in. The big joke is that she screws up with her first client and has to flee when the client comes after her for revenge. That’s just bad planning, not a culture clash of a ninja-like superspy having to fit in with the country club suburban moms. I wanted to see her chaperoning a school field trip and having to use her skills to keep the kids in line and out of trouble but without getting caught doing something a normal mom shouldn’t be able to do. Or at a playdate with the youngest and fending off a bully or a loose dog on the playground.

They tell us that the oldest, a middle schooler, had a bad day at school, but we never see her at school. The problem with the youngest is that she doesn’t want to tell her fake name, since that’s a lie. Her dad just tells her she needs to lie without explaining why.

As for Gru himself, his main story isn’t about trying to blend in. It’s about the neighbor’s daughter being an aspiring supervillain who recognizes him and blackmails him into helping her with a heist. I do like the way her story turns out, but I still wanted something more for Gru, since a lot of his insecurity is whether someone like him really can be a good father. What happens if he’s in a place where the only thing he has going on is being a good father and keeping his family safe, but he can’t openly use any of his usual methods? The only culture clash moment is when his neighbor invites him to play tennis, and a Minion goes along and plays umpire, tilting the game in Gru’s favor. It’s funny, but it’s more of that hiding incompetence, as going out in public with a Minion is pretty much waving a giant “Here’s Gru!” flag.

The movie itself is actually okay and a lot of fun, but I found myself very frustrated by what it wasn’t. I’m surprised that with all the people in the movie industry who had to have been involved in creating it, no one said, “Hey, shouldn’t we be playing with the culture clash here?”

I don’t know what this weekend’s movie(s) will be. I’m not sure what I’m in the mood for.

Life

Not My Home

It turns out that the house isn’t to be mine, after all, and I’m okay with that.

The inspection was Saturday afternoon, and my Realtor and I both went so we could see what the inspector found. I also wanted to take pictures and measurements. This meant that I was spending nearly two hours in the place. While I was seeing things I liked about it, I was also seeing some things I found a little unsettling. One of those was the house next door. When I looked out one of the upstairs windows that faced that house, I could see that it was in really bad shape, with holes in the outside walls, including one up under the eaves. My inspector even glanced over there and commented on it. They probably have a colony of either squirrels, raccoons, or bats living in that attic.

I also started noticing how narrow the doors were. In my online furniture shopping, I’d seen that they had a note about how the doorway had to be at least 32 inches for them to deliver a sofa, and when I measured I found that the front door and the living room door were only 31 inches wide. They must have had to deliver everything through the back door, which was wider, but which required going up some pretty steep steps from the deck. I noticed that the section of fence between the side yard and back yard by that part of the deck had been removed and was leaning against the side fence.

The inspection report wasn’t utterly alarming. The biggest worry for me was the fact that the roof was original to the house, which was built in 1900. It’s a tin roof, so I guess it doesn’t wear out like modern shingles do, but a number of the tin panels are bent, so wind and water can get up under them. The inspector recommended getting a tin roof expert to look at it and see what needed to be repaired. The basement was just a crawl space, not an actual basement, though it did have things like the water heater and interior unit for the air conditioner and heater in there. The floor was dirt, and the dirt from when it was excavated was piled up against one of the walls. The inspector suggested getting the basement sealed to prevent mold, bugs, etc., from getting in. He also said the house needed new rain gutters. He thought the basement stairs and back stairs to the deck needed to be replaced and were too steep, so they were unsafe.

The thing that I found a bit concerning that I hadn’t even considered was that there’s a big tree on the neighbor’s side of the property line that’s too close to both houses. It’s just about at the back end of the houses, barely five feet from both houses. A lot of that tree’s branches hang over what would have been my house’s roof, and he said a tree that tall would have a root system that could encroach on my basement or undermine my foundation, and if that tree fell in a windstorm, depending on how it fell it would either fall between the houses, so the branches would hit what would have been my bedroom; it would fall away from both houses, so the roots would come up under the rear corner of my house; it would fall on the neighbor’s house so the roots would dig up my basement; or it would fall on my house. He suggested getting together with the neighbor to have the tree removed because a tree that size shouldn’t be within ten feet of a house.

Once the inspector left, my Realtor and I were walking around, looking at the things he pointed out. Her husband’s a contractor, so she knows a lot about how to get stuff like that done, and we were trying to figure out what we might be able to ask the seller to fix and how much it would cost to fix the other stuff. The tree was a big question mark because it’s on the neighbor’s property, and given the condition of that building, we weren’t sure I could get the neighbor to do anything. While we were standing outside, I smelled smoke and commented that someone had their fireplace going. Then my Realtor noticed smoke coming from near the house next door.

She looked and saw that the leaves on the ground in front of that house were burning, and there was a kid nearby. She went into Mom mode and ran over to make sure the kid was okay. He just looked at her, shrugged, and said, “I like starting fires.”

My Realtor looked at me and mouthed, “Oh, no.” We noted then that the house next door had been divided into apartments. That meant there was probably a non-resident landlord, and he clearly didn’t care for maintaining the place, so tracking him down to get the tree dealt with wouldn’t be easy. I might not even be able to get anything done if the tree actually fell on my place. I’d have to find out who the owner was and find a way to contact him. Beyond that, I wasn’t super keen on living next door to a poorly maintained apartment building that houses a kid who likes to start fires. Even aside from the fires, those houses have street parking (since they were built before cars were common), and if there are three families in one building, that means they take up a lot of parking. They were parked in front of what would have been my house, so I might not always have been able to park at my house.

The Realtor apologized for not having noticed all this before I paid for the inspection. She said I couldn’t cancel the contract based on the neighbors, but there was enough in the inspection report to give me grounds to back out. That was what I decided to do because the roof plus the gutters plus the basement, plus the steps, plus the tree added to the neighboring house and the kid who likes to start fires was all too much.

Oddly, this came as a huge relief. I did like a lot about the house. I’ve loved the idea of living in a Victorian home since I was a kid. But I think I was trying to force it. I was so eager about finding a place and getting that worry out of the way (since the market is pretty tight) that I jumped at something that would kind of work and ignored the vague sense of disappointment underlying it because it never felt right. I have this sense of my home in my head, and no matter how much I tried mentally arranging my furniture in this house and no matter how much online shopping I did for furnishings, I never managed to make this house the house in my head. The head house refused to be replaced, and I felt a sense of loss for not having the head house, if that makes any sense. The moment I had a good reason not to take this house, I felt so much better.

I learned so much from that inspection, though. I have a really good checklist of things to look for before I go so far as to make an offer. I know I need to spend a lot more time in the house before I decide. I need to walk the block and around to the block behind to get a sense of the neighborhood. I did drive down that street, but it’s a narrow street on a hill, so I didn’t notice the three mailboxes on the front of that house next door while I had my eyes on the road. I need to walk it to get a good sense of what’s there and what the neighborhood feels like. I’ve been driving around the neighborhoods I like at various times and had never considered this one, so I need to explore it a bit more.

This means I won’t be having to move right away, so I need to buckle down and work on my writing in the meantime. I’ll probably start the serious house hunting after Thanksgiving. I have until May to move out of this apartment, and I can always go month-to-month if I have to after that.

writing, Life

Life and Fiction

I found myself going down a mental rabbit trail last night as I thought about how all my books seem to represent the phase of life I’m in at that time and things that are going on with me.

When I came up with the idea for the Enchanted, Inc. series, I was working for a major international public relations agency, doing PR for big corporations. I worked with a lot of Mimis and Gregors, both in the organization I was in and in client organizations. The first spark of the idea came when I was getting ready to log in to my e-mail and I found myself wishing that there would be a job offer in it. At the same time, my writing career was struggling. I’d had quick initial success but had gone a long time without being able to sell a book, in spite of a lot of trying. My main problem turned out to be that I was writing the wrong thing, something I didn’t actually enjoy. I hadn’t discovered my secret magical strength, I guess, and I was in the wrong place. Meanwhile, I was still trying to date and going on a lot of blind dates and setups. I had hopes of finding Mr. Right and having a family.

So I wrote a series about a young woman who thinks her life is on the brink of failure, but it turns out she’s just in the wrong place because she has skills she doesn’t even know she has. Once she finds what she can really do and contribute, she finds where she belongs, and everything falls into place for her.

The Fairy Tale series was a weird one because it involved a character who came to me in a dream decades earlier being slotted into an image that I dreamed, and then a story built around it based on all those editors who said they wanted something like Enchanted, Inc. but they didn’t want to continue that series. I started working on it not long after I learned that the series was being dropped by the publisher. I think at the time I was dealing with a lot of doubts about my potential and whether I was holding myself back. That came out in Sophie’s background of her having been so talented but then she felt like she had to give it all up. She was stuck until she was forced to take action and face everything. The time I was writing it was a difficult one for me, and that probably came through in the story.

I don’t think Rebel Mechanics came from anything in particular in my life. It’s probably my most political series, as it came from seeing what was going on in the world. It feels like we’re in a second Gilded Age, when so much of the wealth is concentrated in a few people who are living obscenely opulent lives while resisting paying taxes or paying their employees, and they have so much power over everyone else. That translated into wondering how it would work if they had literal magical power. I think the analogy is more apt now than ever, but I’m not sure I’m up for dealing with that world right now. It would be an unsettling place to dwell in for me. At some point, it might become cathartic to write about toppling everything, but to get there you have to be in the bad part of it.

The mysteries definitely reflect where I was when I was writing them. I started writing the first book at around the same time I started thinking about moving somewhere else. I didn’t have a target at the time, but I knew I wanted to get away from a major metropolitan area. So, I created a small town for my heroine to go to. The eerie thing is that the town I created is so much like the town I ended up moving to, and I’d written at least three of those books before I even heard about this town. My current town is much bigger than the one in the books and a lot hillier, and it’s laid out differently, but there’s a lot in common. We have the preserved Victorian main street with shops and restaurants on the ground floor and apartments and offices above. There’s even an old movie theater next door to a Mexican restaurant (but it’s a first-run theater instead of just showing classics). There’s a co-working hub like the one in the books (and now I don’t remember how much of that ended up in the books. I wrote whole scenes involving it that I think got cut). There’s a park with a bandstand gazebo where they hold concerts and where they did the July 4 festivities. Our rail station is active for passenger rail, both Amtrak and sightseeing excursions, unlike the one in the books. The downtown area is surrounded by historic homes, though ours are a bit older than you’d find in most Texas towns. The house I’m buying that was built in 1900 isn’t considered “historic” here (which is nice because it means I don’t have to abide by historical society rules in what I do with it). There’s even a wealthy man (an architect rather than a tech billionaire) who’s been behind a lot of the preservation of the town and restoring and repurposing some of the old buildings. I basically created my dream town before I actually found it in real life.

Right now, I’m finding myself drawn to secondary world fantasy, where none of it involves our world. I saw a joke on Facebook about how Mr. Rogers had it right: Come home, change into comfortable clothes, then escape to the Land of Make Believe. That’s where I am at the moment. I’m enjoying playing in this other world. The cozy fantasy subgenre is something I’ve always wanted. I love the parts of The Lord of the Rings that are just the characters hanging out in the Shire or in Rivendell. I wanted stories about just being in those places without any worry about fleeing from orcs or the Nazgul or the threat of the whole world getting sucked into darkness. I just want daily life in magical places.

I remember that when the series Westworld was first on TV, I found myself pondering what kind of high-tech, immersive amusement park I’d want to visit, and I came to the conclusion that I’d want a mild fantasy quest, basically an excuse for a journey through the world, with some purpose but without a lot of stakes. Of course, in that theme park of the world, there would be overnight stops set up to look like you’re camping in the woods, but that mossy stretch of ground would actually be a comfortable mattress, and there’d be a modern bathroom in that huge tree trunk. That’s also the kind of fictional experience I want–the low-stakes adventure in a magical world, not hidden modern conveniences.

With the Rydding Village books, it’s all about finding a place and building a community, and that’s definitely where I am now. I’ve also been working on a less-cozy romantasy that’s about leaving the familiar and going into the unknown, which is also my current state.

In other news, I got the house! Contract’s signed. The inspection is tomorrow. Now I’ll need to sell a lot of books to rebuild my savings and buy nice things for the new place.

Life

My New Home?

I’ve been pretty distracted the past few days, not by the big national stuff, but by a house.

My plan upon moving here was to rent an apartment for a year while I decided if I like it here, and then sometime after the holidays start house hunting to buy a new place. The weekend before last, I took my first step in preparing for that by going to an open house just to meet the Realtor. The plan was to do that several times and then pick a Realtor. But I really hit it off with this one, and last week she was already sending me listings based on what I said I was looking for. Friday morning, she sent me one that I couldn’t pass up. She arranged to show it to me on Sunday afternoon, and it was eerily close to perfect. There are a few things about it that I would prefer to be different, but it has other features I hadn’t considered.

It’s basically a Victorian dollhouse cottage, built in 1900, but the interior has been remodeled fairly recently. It still has the original wood floors, a lot of the woodwork, the stairs, and the interior doors, but it looks like they’ve pretty much gutted it and redone the wiring and plumbing and created new closets in the bedrooms. They took out the wall between the dining room and kitchen, so it’s a nice open space. It has a modern kitchen and bathrooms, plus central air and heat, which is rare in a house that old. It’s the best of both worlds, with modern functionality and vintage aesthetic. It’s in a neighborhood near downtown and near a small park. The neighborhood looks kind of like San Francisco, with rows of Victorian homes on steep hills. As a plus, the back deck and back upstairs windows have a view of mountains. And it was less expensive than I’d budgeted for.

A two-story Victorian cottage with a front porch and ornate wood trim. The siding is a light grayish green. A blue Subaru is parked in front.
Isn’t this cute? My car looks good parked in front of it.

It seems weird to buy the first house I’ve looked at, but I felt like I couldn’t pass it up, so I put in an offer. I’ve spent the last couple of days waiting to hear if they accepted it. My Realtor said today that we should have all the signatures tomorrow. Then we’ll schedule an inspection because I don’t want to buy a house that old without knowing what I’m getting into. I’m cautiously optimistic that it’s going to happen. I’d be closing in early December, so I may be able to move in by Christmas — or at least start moving in. Since I’m just moving across town and I have time on my lease, what I may do is see if I can have the furniture and major stuff moved so I can start living there, and then I can gradually move the other stuff over, putting it away exactly where I want it as I go. That’s a bit less overwhelming than having to have everything packed all at once and then having a stack of boxes to deal with.

But this means I may have to delay the release of Rydding Village book 3. I hope to have a draft done before I close on the house and start moving, but then life will be chaos for about a month before I have a chance to revise and edit it. Even if it falls through, either because someone swooped in and outbid me or they find something scary in the inspection, I’m not sure when I’d be ready to publish because I need to let it rest a bit before I can revise and edit. I’m making a more realistic publishing/work schedule for next year. It will help that I shouldn’t have any major moves popping in.

While the move happening a few months earlier than I planned is a bit stressful, in a way, it’ll be nice to have it over with. I’ve been living on the verge of maybe moving soon for nearly a decade. It was about eight or nine years ago that I first decided that I wanted a different house, but at first I was thinking it would be in my same neighborhood. I started living with the idea of moving, saving as much money as possible and not buying stuff I would have to move, living with things that were wearing out with the idea that I’d get rid of them when I moved and replace them in the new home. It was about five years ago that I started thinking of moving to a different part of the country, and about three years ago that I started researching this area. Then there was the actual move this year, and I’ve been living where I am now with the idea that it was temporary, so buying as little as possible, not really getting set up in an optimized way because what’s the point when I’d be moving again. I just put things away to get them out of the way. It’ll be nice to get somewhere where I can truly settle. I’ll have to get some furniture and I’ll gradually figure out how I’m going to decorate, but at least I’ll be home

Assuming it all comes through. I’ve decided I’d be okay if the deal falls apart, but I’ll be glad if it doesn’t. It’s rare to find an older home in this price range that’s already been updated. It’s not exactly what I’ve been imagining, not the neighborhood I’ve been researching, but it may actually be more convenient to downtown. I guess I just hadn’t considered it because I didn’t walk around there when I visited last year, but when a friend drove me around town to orient me, she took me through that neighborhood and said it would be a good place to look. Apparently, it’s where a lot of the artsy types live. The people across the street have pink and purple hair and are really nice (I met them when I was looking at the house and asked them questions about the neighborhood).

Now I’m going to try to focus on writing instead of doing online searches for rugs and sofas and furniture for the front porch.

writing

The Process

I recently saw a quote about how you never really learn to write a novel. You learn to write this novel. Each one is different. Some are easier, some are harder, even when you have something like 30 books under your belt.

But you can hone your process along the way and figure out things that usually work for you and things that definitely don’t work. Some of that may change as you get into different phases of your career.

For instance, there’s the advice that it’s best to write the whole book before you start revising it. That makes sense on some levels. It’s especially important for your first book because that tendency to try to make chapter one perfect before moving on has stalled out way too many writers who end up never finishing a book. It doesn’t make much sense to fine-tune and perfect the early part of the book until you see how the whole book comes out and know whether that part will have to be rewritten.

On the other hand, there’s no point in plowing ahead when you feel like you’ve taken a wrong turn. If you keep writing on the wrong path, you’ll just have to rewrite everything. You might as well go back to where you feel the problem is and figure it out before you move forward. My general rule is that you backtrack to fix plot, not details. If you just need to pull a Bill and Ted and go back to put a trash can there for when you need it later, you can leave yourself a note. That’s why I like using Scrivener for writing — it’s quick and easy to find the scene that needs fixing, and there’s a space for notes on the scene, so as soon as you realize you’re going to need that garbage can, you can go to the scene where you need to set it up and write a note saying “put garbage can here,” then go back to writing as though the can has been there all along. You definitely don’t want to go back to make the words pretty, since the words are likely to change.

I generally find that my process involves writing a scene, then that night realizing what I did wrong and how the scene could be better, maybe some stuff I forgot to include. The next day, I start my writing session with revising the previous day’s writing to fix it and add the stuff I forgot. That gives me momentum to plow ahead.

Based on the book I’m working on now, I think I’m going to add a mid-book review to my process. At around the midpoint, I need to review what I’ve already written, since by that time there are a lot of versions in my head and I’m not sure what’s actually in the book. There’s what I thought of when I was outlining, there’s the initial scene, and there’s the “oops, I did it wrong” rewrite. I often drift far from my outline. It’s hard to write the end of the book when you aren’t sure what’s in the beginning, so it’s a good idea to go back and reread it all. That reread may reveal things that need to be fixed. In straying from the outline, did I forget to include some critical elements? Have I been meandering and writing whole scenes that lend nothing to the story? Do I have too many scenes that are essentially the same thing happening over and over? Is the plot even working? Fixing all this stuff at the midpoint means the ending goes more smoothly.

In the current book, I’ve realized that a different character is the protagonist for one of the story lines, so I’m rewriting to make him a viewpoint character. I can’t adequately tell that story from someone else’s perspective. As soon as I went back through the various story outline models looking at it that way, all the story beats clicked into place and I figured out how the ending should go. That’s a good sign.

So now instead of getting near the end and realizing I have no idea what’s going to happen, I think I’m going to plan to review when I get to a particular spot in the story. I’ll build that into my timeline so I won’t feel like doing that is putting me behind. That should also make my production schedule more realistic. If I need less time than I plan for, I can get a head start on the next project or work in another project in between (or take time off!). It’s a lot harder to adjust when I need more time than I planned for.

Life

Glorious Fall

Fall was one of the reasons I moved across the country. Texas doesn’t really have fall as a season. They have occasional days from October through Christmas that feel somewhat fall-like. The peak color starts hitting maybe around Thanksgiving, so fall overlaps with the holiday season. I always delayed starting to acknowledge the holiday season because I was trying to enjoy fall. I once joked that autumn in Texas reminded me of the Ray Bradbury short story “All Summer in a Day,” except it was all autumn in a day. The first day the high temperatures dropped below 80 (usually in October), you went on a frenzy of doing all the fall stuff — get a pumpkin spice latte, hot cocoa, or hot cider. Make soup and bread. Go on a walk in the woods. You had to cram all of your fall stuff into that day because you never knew if that would be all you’d get. There might be another fall-like day later on, closer to Thanksgiving. Or we’d get a freak freeze at Halloween and we wouldn’t get any fall color.

Every year when the September and October issues of home and garden magazines came out, I’d read them and sigh over the idea of having fall as a whole season instead of the occasional day and having it come in September and October instead of just before Christmas.

Well, I found that here. We started getting the kind of weather I associate with fall in mid-August, and that was when we got our first hints of fall color. We’re getting our peak fall color now, as October is coming to an end, though there are still a lot of trees that haven’t completely turned, so it will probably last at least a couple more weeks. I’ve been able to do all the fall things without having to cram them into one day.

I’ve gone walking in the woods, driven through the mountains to look at leaves, visited an apple orchard and a farm stand. I finally got the apple cider donuts I’ve always wanted to try. I’ve spent time sitting on my porch, drinking warm drinks. The trees around my back yard are just starting to turn, so unless we get a drastic freeze or severe wind storm in the next week or so, I’ve got at least another week of peak fall before the transition to winter starts. And then I’m going to Texas for Thanksgiving, so I’ll hit peak fall there.

A white gazebo is surrounded by pumpkins in various shapes and colors, from traditional orange to white.
Ticking the farm stand off my fall list. I bought apples, but I know where to go for pumpkins.

The color around here has been spectacular. Here’s part of one of the city parks, and the trees were even brighter in person. They were practically neon.

A curving road is lined in bright red and gold trees. The ground below is blanketed in fallen red and gold leaves.
This color was even more astonishing in person. The photo didn’t capture the full glory.

The mountains were like a patchwork quilt. This is from the Blue Ridge Parkway, but the sun was at the wrong angle to really show the intensity of the color.

A view of mountains covered in red and gold trees with a bright blue sky overhead.
The sun was at the wrong angle to really show the color in a photo, but this view from the Blue Ridge Parkway was all gold, yellow, and red.

I’ve never seen such intense reds. Most of the “red” leaves I’ve seen before were more rust or burgundy, but they have scarlet leaves here.

A single tree with scarlet leaves stands against green trees.
Such bright red!

There’s also some lovely gold, like this tree in the churchyard at the old church downtown (there are tombstones in that churchyard from before the American Revolution).

A bright gold tree hangs over an ornate iron fence, showering the sidewalk with leaves. There's a bright orange tree next to it. In the background is an old church.
The churchyard at the old church has some of the best fall color downtown. It’s like walking down the yellow brick road.

I just need some time at a firepit or campfire to complete the autumn experience. That’s a plan for when I get a real house. But there were a lot of campfires at the Frontier Culture museum event I went to last weekend, so I got to look at leaves while getting a nice aroma of wood smoke.

While I’ve joked that I want to find the place that has fall-like weather year-round, I think that part of the appeal of fall for me is how ephemeral it is. It only lasts a relatively short time, and it’s constantly changing. The color is different every day, as is the amount of leaves. You have to enjoy it while you can, and you revel in the change. I wouldn’t mind the fall-like weather through much of the year, with cool nights and days just warm enough to be outside comfortably, but you need some warmer weather in the summer to truly appreciate that first hint of a chill and to know that the change is happening.

exploring

Off Again

It’s another adventure day. It’s supposed to be nearing peak color on the Blue Ridge Parkway and I want to miss the Saturday crowds, so I’m off to explore. I may find apple cider donuts, and I’m going to try to get some apples for making apple butter.

This morning, I went to a meeting at the local Shakespeare theater, which is the only reproduction of the Blackfriars Theatre, where Shakespeare’s company performed once he had sponsorship by the king. The Globe is more famous, but Blackfrairs was the fancy one, and for some reason they rebuilt it in this smallish town, so we have the American Shakespeare Center here. I met some interesting people and even exchanged contact info and got invited to some other events.

It was exactly this time last year when I first visited here to decide if I wanted to move, and I can’t believe I live here now. I think it really was a good move for me. I would like to meet more people, but that will take time. In the meantime, there’s so much to do and see.

Now I’m going to pack a picnic lunch and head off into the mountains.

Life, exploring

The Adventures Continue

Last weekend’s exploring adventure involved a bit of history, some socializing, and the continuing quest for apple cider donuts.

I started by going to the heritage day at the Mennonite Heritage Farm. That’s part of Eastern Mennonite University about 40 minutes north of me, and it’s a preserved/restored/rebuilt farm/settlement. For this event, they were demonstrating some aspects of farm life from the past. I took the back roads up there and saw some amazing scenery, as well as driving through some of the towns that get mentioned on the TV newscasts, so I managed to orient myself better around the area along the way.

When I got there, I was just in time for a shape singing lesson. I’ve sung a lot of pieces that had their origins in shape singing, but I hadn’t seen the actual shapes in use. I’ll have to research more to see how that works because I’m not sure of the point. The old hymn books we were using used both the shapes and a regular staff, so I never looked at the shapes. I just looked at where the shapes were on the staff. It’s possible that this publication was a hybrid and the true shape singing didn’t use a staff. Anyway, it was fun getting to sit in an old one-room schoolhouse/church to do this kind of singing.

They had some farm animals, as well as activities mostly for kids to do, like a two-person saw, a cider press, and tin punching. They also had some blacksmith demonstrations and they were making molasses and making popcorn in a big kettle. Then the buildings on the property (old farmhouses) had some craft displays, like showing the transition from raw flax to linen fabric.

Demonstration day at a historic farm. In the foreground, a man makes popcorn in a big, black kettle over an open fire. To the right is a big, red-brick farmhouse. In the background is a white dining pavilion tent. The sky is a bright, clear, blue.
A day at the farm.

They had a lunch on the grounds, with soup, homemade bread, homemade butter, and homemade apple butter, plus pies. They had long tables under a tent pavilion, with open seating. I ended up chatting with the people I was sitting near, swapping suggestions about places to visit in the area (they’ve been around here for a while, but I’ve gone to places they haven’t). And it turned out that they’re friends with my neighbor a couple of doors down, the one I met at the town visitors center when I first got here. I got to try some shoo-fly pie, which I’ve read about but have never had. Then I got to take a buggy ride. They had an Amish/Old Order Mennonite buggy and were giving rides. I walked up to take pictures and they said they had room for one person, but everyone waiting was a group, so I went for it. I got to sit next to the driver and chatted with him.

A white, wooden schoolhouse with a woman in an old-fashioned dress standing in front. In the foreground is an Amish-type black buggy pulled by a dark brown horse. There's a row of green trees behind the school, and the sky is bright blue.
Roger the horse took me on a buggy ride. In the background is the old schoolhouse where they taught shape singing.

After that, I headed up into the mountain foothills toward an apple orchard that supposedly sells cider donuts, along with cider, and there’s a brewery for hard cider, with a tasting room with fabulous views. Well, it turns out that everyone else thought it would be a great day to pick and buy apples and have cider, plus they were having a wedding there. I could smell the donuts. I saw people eating them, but I never found where you bought them. There were some really long lines around the place, so one of them may have been that line. It was too crowded for me, so I bailed. At least it was a really pretty drive.

On the way home, I stopped at a heritage market that I’ve seen advertised on TV. They advertised baked goods, produce, and other stuff, so I thought maybe they’d have donuts (and probably a restroom). It turned out to be more of a mall, and they had a really good kitchenware shop where I found a pastry cloth and rolling pin cover that I’ve been looking for and unable to find. No donuts, alas, though. When I get a permanent house and am ready to decorate, this place would be good to go back to because they had a lot of handcrafted items, plus that kitchenware shop (so many gadgets!).

I have leads on a couple of other possible orchards that advertise cider donuts, and I think I’ll go on Friday this week, when it may not be as crowded. On the weekend, there’s an event at the Frontier Culture museum, plus there’s a festival at the park near me, which means it would be a good time to walk or drive around the neighborhoods I’m targeting for buying a house to see how far I can hear the music from the festival. It’s not too bad where I am, though there are times when it’s less pleasant to sit on my porch, so I want to see where the music is louder.

It was around this time last year that I came here to visit and see if I wanted to move here. I really did pick the best time to visit because autumn here is absolutely glorious.

A hillside covered with red and gold trees.
Fall colors at the park near my house.
writing

Writing in a Daze

I hit my target word count for Rydding Village book 3, but I’m only at about 2/4 of the way through the story, and I’m not entirely sure what should happen next. I checked my outline notes, and it turns out that the ending I had planned was based on an entirely different middle (and was pretty vague). It seems I veered into an unexpected direction along the way.

So now I’m regrouping by rereading the book up to this point, since I couldn’t remember what I’d planned vs. what I actually wrote and I need to base the end on what’s actually in the book. It turns out that I seem to have written this book in a kind of daze because I don’t remember writing a lot of this — and it’s only been a month since I started writing.

For instance, in chapter 20 I wrote a scene that involved the viewpoint character trying to figure out who a person was and getting her first impression of that character, since I didn’t think the viewpoint character had encountered this person before. But in chapter 4 there was a whole scene of her being formally introduced to this person.

I also seem to have changed my mind a few times along the way, going back and forth about what a character’s attitude toward a particular topic should be.

Then there are the amusing typos. Some of them come across like I was doing dictation and the transcription software misread what I was saying, like the word “end” for what should have been “inn.” I guess I was transcribing the story coming out of my brain and glitched. Some of them are clearly me hitting the wrong key adjacent to the key I was aiming for or missing a key, but somehow it still makes a real word that makes sense in the sentence while drastically changing the meaning of the sentence. I’m fixing these things as I find them to avoid future confusion even though this pass is meant to be just reading to refresh my memory, but I’m going to have to be really careful when editing because this isn’t something an editor is likely to catch if the editor doesn’t know what I meant to say. It looks like a reasonable sentence if you don’t know what I was trying to say.

Rereading the book is helping me clarify character arcs that will lead to an ending. It’s also helping me check pacing. It takes so much longer to write a book than it does to read one, and it often takes a lot longer to write a fast-paced scene than a slower one, so what feels like it might be dragging might be the most intense scene to read.

I hope to finish rereading today, do some thinking over the weekend, then finish this draft next week. I’m not sure about my release strategy. I might be falling into the holiday rush if I try to publish later this year, so I may give myself a little breathing room for thinking and revising and publish early next year. Things always seem to end up taking a lot longer than I planned.