Month: October 2017

NaNoWriMo: Launch Is Ready For Go

On By angeliquejamailIn NaNoWriMo, stress, writer's block, writing3 Comments

Ready for go? Hardly. But who ever is?

Tomorrow is November 1st, and after what I think I can safely call a successful Hallowe’en in our household, I’m going to tuck in on my writing again tomorrow.

Not gonna lie, the last few months have seen some Serious Writer’s Block, worse than it’s been the whole last year. But I’m tired of that ish and ready to reset. I teach high school full-time and have two children in middle school, so the idea that I will churn out 50,000 words of anything that aren’t work emails or comments on graded papers is utterly bananapants. But I do like to commit myself to my own informal brand of NaNoWriMo every year, and that involves just promising to write something every day: work on whatever is my current WIP, write a poem or a blog post, do some important writerly career stuff, significantly edit. And often I do manage it — last year (when my work came crashing to a horrified halt the second week of November) notwithstanding.

So I’m committing to it again. I’d like to make at least 350 words a day on the new WIP, or more if I hit a stride. I’d also be satisfied if some of those days involved a substantive blog post or a poem or some serious editing. I’m going to try. And because I’m the type of person who needs external deadlines and accountability to really make sure I get it done, you can follow my daily updates on my Facebook page here. (Like the page and turn on notifications to see the updates in your news feed.)

I’ve come to an understanding of myself that there are three things I need in order to keep my stress at bay. (Well, okay, three things other than my excellent marriage.) I need to exercise regularly. I need to read something for fun. I need to write. All of this is most successful when each of them is done every day, or nearly every day. I have found I can handle quite a lot when I have those activities in my routine. So I’m participating in a fitness challenge at school, I have a book picked out that I’m excited to read and which is sitting on my nightstand, and the next chapter of my WIP is outlined and ready for me to draft it.

Let’s hope this works out the way I want it to.

Okay? Okay.

Writer is ready for go.

 

Monday Earworm: Michael Jackson

On By angeliquejamailIn "Thriller", Michael Jackson, Monday earworm, music, music video1 Comment

You had to know this one would show up sooner or later.

Shortly after this video came out, an hour-or-so-long documentary, The Making of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” came out on cable, and my mom recorded it for my siblings and me because, of course, we were huge Michael Jackson fans, just like most of the rest of the industrialized world in the 1980s. We watched it repeatedly, learning the behind-the-scenes awesomeness of the creation of this mini-movie. In it we saw the multiple layers of make-up and special effects required to transform him from himself to the various creatures he becomes in this video, and we also got to see just how exuberant and hyperactive his personality was in rehearsal. He was like a kid.

Anyway, this is a Hallowe’en staple. I hope your holiday is wonderful.

 

Witchy Weekends: John Donne

On By angeliquejamailIn "Witchcraft By A Picture", feminism, John Donne, poetry, Witchy Weekends4 Comments

I may have shared this poem with you before? John Donne is one of my favorites of the old poetry masters.

“Witch” is an epithet hurled at many a disobedient or otherwise displeasing woman, and “witchcraft” levied at her actions.

I could go on and on about this for days, but I’ll save it. Instead just have this poem, Donne’s “Witchcraft By A Picture.”

***

Witchcraft By A Picture
by John Donne

I fix mine eye on thine, and there
Pity my picture burning in thine eye;
My picture drown’d in a transparent tear,
When I look lower I espy;
Hadst thou the wicked skill
By pictures made and marr’d, to kill,
How many ways mightst thou perform they will?

But now I’ve drunk thy sweet salt tears,
And though thou pour more, I’ll depart;
My picture vanished, vanish all fears
That I can be endamaged by that art;
Though thou retain of me
One picture more, yet that will be,
Being in thine own heart, from all malice free.

Witchy Weekend: What Is A Witch, Anyway?

On By angeliquejamailIn politics, witches, Witchy Weekend3 Comments

A practicer of magical arts.

Someone who buys into that really old time religion. A pagan.

Someone who knows her own damn mind.

A politically inconvenient troublemaker.

A heretic.

A caricature, a cautionary tale, a mockery.

Someone trying to make at least one little corner of the world a better place.

Someone who meditates.

Someone whose compass has five points.

Someone who is using the resources she has at hand to solve the problems that sometimes feel too big, but she is trying to do it anyway.

Someone who knows that what goes around, comes around, threefold.

Someone who wears a pointy hat, someone who has an intelligent cat, someone who soars to the moon and back.

 

 

Monday Earworm: KT Tunstall

On By angeliquejamailIn Monday earworm, music, music video, Space City Weather blogLeave a comment

So, the Space City Weather blog — which, by the way, is a competent, no-hype, really enjoyable source for meteorological information pertaining to Houston — is declaring this Fall Day, because somewhat cooler weather has finally arrived, and it’s likely we have seen the last of the summer-like weather for this year. (Let us hope so!)

I could not find the original music video for Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer,” which has meant, in my mind, the end of the summer ever since the song first became a hit in 1984. If you ever do find the original video for it, check it out, because it’s quite a fabulous thing. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it, and they’re not wrong:

The music video to “The Boys of Summer” is a French New Wave-influenced piece directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. Shot in black-and-white, it shows the main character of the song at three different stages of life (as a young boy, a young adult and middle-aged), in each case reminiscing about the past relationship. This is shown during the line “A little voice inside my head said don’t look back, you can never look back” at which point, each of the three people look back in turn. The young boy in the video, played by seven-year-old Josh Paul,[12] resembles a young Don Henley. The girl in the music video is played by Audie England.

Interspersed with these scenes are segments of Henley miming the words of the song while driving in a convertible. At its conclusion, the video uses the post-modern concept of exposing its own workings, as with a wry expression Henley drives the car away from a rear projection screen.

The video won the Video of the Year at the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards (leading Henley to comment at the Awards the following year that he had won for “riding around in the back of a pickup”).[13] It also won that year’s awards for Best Direction, Best Art Direction, and Best Cinematography. The Best Direction award was presented to Mondino by Henley’s then-former Eagles bandmate Glenn Frey.

But like I said, I couldn’t find that, and in looking, I found this instead. It’s wonderful. Do enjoy its being made utterly new again by KT Tunstall.

 

Witchy Weekends: I Wish…

On By angeliquejamailIn cartoons, childhood, teaching, witches, Witchy WeekendLeave a comment

When I was a child watching the Saturday morning animated special movies for kids every weekend…

Okay, so you’re probably either groaning because you remember those or groaning because you’re conflating them with After-School Specials.

Seriously, though, sometimes those animated shows on the weekends were kind of cool. But the only one I really remember now was called maybe “My Teacher Is A Witch” or something similarly creative, and it was about a class of kids who got a new teacher one day whom they believed was a real witch. What tipped them off? The day she erased a really full blackboard full of chalk with a single swipe of her arm.

And I know it was just a cartoon and life doesn’t really work that way, but I cannot tell you how often, especially since becoming a teacher, I’ve wished that it did. I could really, really use that kind of speed and efficiency during the school year.

Especially this weekend, when I’m mired in grading and comments (two-paragraph narratives I write for the report card of every student in every one of my classes to discuss each student’s individual progress). But I don’t have that power, so this anecdote is about as substantive as my blog is going to get at the moment.

But here, to tide you over, have this lovely picture.

Monday Earworm: Rush

On By angeliquejamailIn "New World Man", Monday earworm, music, politics, Rush, teaching4 Comments

I love this song. I think I might actually like the studio version better than this live one, but this live one is still pretty great.

My relationship with Rush is tangential and hardly worth fangirl status. Several of my friends in college loved them, and so I started listening to them as well, and while I’m hardly well versed in their entire discography, I’m not sure I’ve ever met a song of theirs I didn’t like. Concept albums really appeal to me as well, so there’s that.

This song always reminds me of my students, especially my seniors, whose potential stretches out before them like an ocean. It also, oddly, reminds me of Justin Trudeau. Not really sure why. Maybe because he’s making a very good case for being the leader of the free world now that the U.S. has clearly relinquished that position? (And sorry, Angela Merkel, you’re otherwise kind of awesome, but no one who doesn’t support same-sex marriage can be the leader of the free world in the 21st Century, so.)

Okay, political rant over. Please to enjoy.

 

Witchy Weekends: Book Spine Poetry

On By angeliquejamailIn book spine poetry, decorating, Hallowe'en, holidays, October, poetry, Witchy Weekends2 Comments

I’m decorating my house for Hallowe’en today, and every year I do a fun mantel which includes some book spine poetry. I try to mix it up each year with different poems. Here are this season’s offerings:

the kingmaker’s daughter / drinking coffee elsewhere / a discovery of witches

 

And in honor of all the actual witches working in service each month in the protection of our country with their bindings:

four sisters, all queens / dime store magic / wicked / chocolat / reason for hope

 

And one more poem, just because it’s up on my mantel, even though it doesn’t have anything to do with witches:

lost / in the land of men / lonely werewolf girl / one hundred years of solitude

 

 

‘Tis the season.