More Untimely TV Comments: Why do I still watch Glee?

Does everyone remember how cool Glee looked when the pilot episode aired?  I do.  I was so excited to see someone actually pull off a musical TV show that I couldn't wait for the full season later that year.  Unfortunately it seems that after three seasons the writers have grown so used to coasting on the coolness of the first season  that they've completely checked out.  Now keep in mind that I know nothing about how writing a TV show works, but here is how I visualize the meeting where they hash things out:

***

Writer 1: So we've tossed around some ideas, and our Controversy Of The Week for this show will be [eating disorders/spousal abuse/teen pregnancy/teen marriage/secondary characters who wish they were Rachel Barry].  Or we could just scrap that and do something about being gay; I really don't think our audience understands our stance on that yet!

Writer 2: Wow that will be so incredibly original and hard-hitting!  How about this week the person who deals with the controversy is [insert name of secondary character].

Writer 3: Great!  I love it when we focus on one of them for one show and then shove them to the back for the rest of the season!  After all, their Controversy Of The Week was resolved in a single episode even though it was an enormous, life-altering issue, so we don't need to hear from that character for a while!

Writer 1: We are amazing!  Also, I think we've left Quinn alone too long; she's only been through three radical and arbitrary personality changes so far this season.  And let's end a very important relationship on the show with an empty cliche.  How about "you need to do this alone so you can grow" (even though we were about to get married).  Let's toss "if it's meant to be it will happen" in there too!

All the other writers: Brilliant!

Writer 2: Let's not forget to emphasize that it's every single Midwesterner's dream to move to New York or L.A. because we are so much better than them!  Also don't forget to put in a scene where we point out that people from Ohio are universally shocked and disturbed by homosexuality, even though we are blatantly ignoring the fact that Columbus has one of the largest LGBT populations in the nation!

Other writers: Our wit is astounding!

Writer 4 (speaks up from the Corner of Shame): Um, so, I was thinking about maybe... a plot for the next episode?

(Other writers stare him down in silent disdain until he huddles back into his corner)

Writer 1: Hurry, someone make a list of songs that relates to our Controversy Of The Week in only the most abstract way possible!  Writer 4, you write Sue Silvester's weekly one-liner which will be the only really funny part of the entire show.

Etc...

***

I've gone through phases of watching and not watching the show, but I always stopped watching before because I was put off by something they did that I found distasteful.  Now I'm put off by how bad the writing is, which is much more likely to turn me off to it permanently.  And has anyone else noticed that in three seasons they've had no new members join as freshman and, until last night, no seniors graduate and leave?  So when the show started they were all freshman and sophomores, even the captains of both the varsity cheerleading squad and the varsity football team.  Really?  That's just stupid.

Anyway, what I'm mildly curious about for next season (since they spent the entire season finale not having any kind of plot, which meant no cliff-hangers or suspense for us to care about over the summer) is how large a role the "graduated" characters will continue to play in the show.  Will they find some way to keep them in the picture, or will they finally give some of those massively talented second and third-tier characters a chance to sing more than back up?  Overall my level of caring is at "shrug," so we'll see if I tune in.

In the meantime, I'd rather watch Smash.

Actually Trying

Well, it's official, on Wednesday I'm meeting with a writing group for the first time ever to critique and be critiqued.  I'm nervous to show my stuff to other writers, but I'm also excited and proud of myself.  I tend to talk a lot about what I could do with writing, but only recently have I started backing that up with the actual doings of a serious writer.  If I want to be a published author someday, joining a writing group is pretty important.  This is probably just me, but in the past I tended to think of dreams as fantasies that would fulfill themselves somewhere in a nebulous future.  Maybe at 27 I'm becoming a grown up.  I've finally realized that my dreams are not going to happen to me on their own and that I have to put in vast amounts of thought, time, and effort to get where I want to be.

Dang it.  I hate effort.

Now I just need to come up with about 6-8 pages of stuff good enough for them to read in the next 24 hours.  I suppose I should be doing that instead of blogging...

Untimely Comments about TV Shows

Watching shows on Hulu means that none of my comments about television are timely, therefore I cannot post them on facebook.  But this is my blog, so are two untimely comments about shows I watched today:

First off, I can't believe The Finder got cancelled AND ended the season/series on that awful everyone-is-scattered-to-the-winds note.  Argh!  Talk about unsatisfying!  I am totally disappointed with the general populace for not liking Finder as much as me.

Secondly, I did end up watching most of this season of Glee, and I think the show's seriously going downhill.  It just isn't living up to the hype anymore.  Anyway, that's not what I wanted to say.  What I wanted to say was that my keen observational powers spotted a mistake in the season finale!  That's right!  At one point, one of the characters mentioned that some teachers "teach driving."  FALSE, Hollywood writers!  Driver's ed is not taught in schools in Ohio.  BAM!  Consider yourself enlightened.

That's all.

Continuing my Education

Many of you may have heard me say how sad I am that I went to BYU before I heard about Brandon Sanderson (he's a very famous, successful fantasy author for those who don't know or don't want to click the link).  I had the opportunity to attend a workshop on plot that he gave at the Writing for Charity conference I went to back in March, but I wanted so badly to attend his class.  Well, now I can.  Sort of.  And so can whoever wants to.  His lectures are online, and they're FREE!

Blogs are more exciting with pictures!  Here is the only one I took at  the Writing for Charity conference.  Brandon is the second one from the left.

Of course no one I know will be as over the moon about this as me, but I was thinking about some of you who've said that they miss school or would like to take some classes.  Here is an excellent opportunity.  And if anyone else knows of any other interesting and free online classes, post about it in the comments!

Brandon Sanderson's 2012 Creative Writing Class

As of now, only four of thirteen lectures are posted, but they are scheduled to appear on a weekly basis and remain accessible indefinitely.  There is also a writing group for those who would like to follow along and do the assignments.

A Reminder for Me

I've been having a lot of trouble feeling as confident in my spiritual life as I did when I was a teenager/college student.  It's left a hole in me, which in turn has left me more unhappy than I normally am.  Unfortunately, this unhappiness has manifested itself very much in the form of uncontrollable anger mixed with short but intense crying jags.  I knew I was having a hard time, but I didn't realize that I was harboring so much anger in my heart until I read the scripture now featured on my sidebar thing and thought, "Wow, no wonder I feel like crap."  It's just is this constant, aimless irritation that ATTACKS the first thing that crosses it and then EXPLODES like a nuclear bomb.  Ask Will and my kids, it's been awful, and while I believe pregnancy hormones are a big part of it, I can do much better.

I don't want anyone reading this to worry, because while it's true that I have rough moments more often than I'd like, I still have many moments of contentment and joy.  Anyway, the reason I posted a scripture on my blog is because I check it all the time to see if anyone else has blogged recently, so it's not meant to be advice for anyone but me, and I'm putting it there like some people put sticky notes on the bathroom mirror: so I can see it  and remind myself that if I want to feel good, I need to try harder to let go of my anger.

Note I can't avoid because I heart sharing: The scripture from the Book of Mormon.  As always, if you'd like to read it let me or that one Mormon friend of yours know and one of us will totally hook you up.

Īnsomnis

It's getting close to 11pm and I would like to get to bed, except Joci is blinking at me sleepily from my pillow while I sit with my pregnant butt going numb on the bottom corner of my bed.  Also Will is snoring like the fate of the world depends on his loudness.  If we ever have another kid (probably not) I'm waiting until we're rich enough to afford a guest room so I have somewhere to crash on nights like this.

Oh, and as far as pregnancy news goes, all is well.  I talked to my doctor and am tentatively scheduled for induction.  I know not everyone approves, but I'm miserable enough already that I don't care.  Plus my doctor won't induce me unless my Bishop score is 10 or more, at which point there is no larger risk for C-section than there would be if I went into labor naturally.

The Busiest Week of my Life

I posted last Saturday about how we were moving.  Yeah, that glucose test (which I passed, by the way) was the last few minutes I had to rest for about four days.  However, even though we were busy and I had to sleep on an air mattress (also known as The Mattress from Pregnancy Hell), we finished everything up thanks to help from some awesome volunteers (THANK YOU to Rosalie, Dustin, and Chrissy) and were in our new place by noon on Tuesday... at which point we had a kitchen FULL of furniture that we had to move around the house.  I'll never know how Will managed after all the moving we did over the weekend, but he did.  He is amazing.  He has also started working 12+ hours per day again, so the fact that he had enough energy to do everything AND not fall behind in school was even more incredible.

So we spent last Wednesday and Thursday moving/reassembling furniture and I woke up on Friday... and realized it was my birthday.  And the ground was covered in snow.  Under most circumstances, this would have been lame.  For us, though, it meant that Will didn't have work, so that was nice.  To be honest, it was the most uneventful birthday I've had in a long time.  Oh well.  Twenty-seven is kind of a "meh" age anyway.

The best part of the day was Will and Chaela decorating the giant cookie I made.  Aren't they talented?  Yes.

So then Saturday comes and Will has to spend most of the day at his friend's house doing homework because we didn't have the internet.  I realized at about 7pm that we hadn't colored eggs yet, so we did that... and totally forgot to get anything for each other!  Sigh.  Life and children, what can I say?  Will went to the grocery store late that night and got us some chocolate, but I definitely owe him something.  The next day we had Will's parent's and grandma over for church and lunch, which was fun and delicious!

Decorating eggs together!

Easter morning.  Good thing church wasn't until 11:30!

That brings us to this week.  Pretty much all I've had the energy to do is hang out outside with the neighbors and keep the house (which is twice as big as I'm used to) moderately clean.  Here are some pictures!!

The kitchen is HUGE!  About 3x the size of our old one.

Living room complete with children watching Lilo and Stitch (Joci's new favorite).

Not a very good picture of our bedroom.  There just weren't any good places to take a picture from.

The girls' room... already a mess.  The two extra rooms are teeny.

The extra room (currently my sewing room) is still in the organizational stage.

The outside of our place!  It also has an awesome back yard, but  there just weren't any good angles to take pictures from.

The duplex is on a dead end, which is great.  You guys should see all the kids that run around here during the day.  Chaela and Joci and I have already made a ton of new friends!

And the girls.  Not that this picture is a good example of it, but they LOVE our new place.

Moving Day!

I am awake right now because my arm hurts too much for me to sleep.  I spent about 9 hours yesterday scrubbing kid  "art," greasy fingerprints, and random scuff marks off my walls, not to mention all the other cleaning in the bathroom and kitchen and vacuuming pretty much every square inch of this place and packing all the miscellaneous objects that didn't make it into boxes the first time around (one of which happened to be our bottle of Tylenol, the only pain killer we own that my pregnant self can take).  So I'm typing this blog right-handed and creeping on a neighbor I know to be an early riser until I see her light come on, at which point I will text her.  Failing that, the closest drug store opens at 8am.  Happy moving day to me!  I guess this bag of frozen vegetables I've been using as an ice pack is no longer coming with us.

Speaking of moving day, up until this thing with my arm everything has been going well, mostly thanks to the awesome friends who helped us over the weekend (you know who you are Rosalie, Chrissy, and Dustin).  Without them, it would have been downright impossible to do this!

We're so grateful to be getting out of this place, and since the carpet cleaners finally came to the new one yesterday, we can get over there and start moving our stuff from the kitchen to the rest of the house!  Seriously, I don't know how the people who helped us last year fit all of our stuff into that trailer, because our new kitchen is much larger than that and completely overflowing.

Well anyway, time to see if my neighbor is awake again!

Since I have a minute... or 180

I hate needle pokes.  After finishing up the whole pediatric vaccine regimen thing as a teenager, I figured I was done until I was old.  Ha ha!  Silly me, then I got pregnant.  Of course, this being my third baby, I was pretty well prepared.  I knew all those blood draws were coming.  That doesn't mean I have to like it.  So here I sit at the hospital on a brown plastic couch, having already gotten my blood drawn twice and waiting for two more.  Don't fail your one-hour glucose tolerance test, ladies, because the three-hour test is more than three times as inconvenient.  

On the bright side, the hospital has windows that are letting in the sun, wi-fi, and a very nice lady drawing my blood who has yet to "search" for a vein, so things could definitely be worse.

Anyway, since I'm a slacker, I thought I'd use this time to post a little update.  I need practice writing anyway, because I'm starting to feel like I should be working on something again but not quite sure where to put my creative energy.  Also my first two attempts at writing fiction since October were so bad I wanted to cry.  So here's what's going on:

We're moving!  I can't lie, I'm very excited.  Our relationship with our landlords has never been comfortable and we seriously dislike the apartment we're in right now (we only moved in there in the first place because the place we were going to move into fell through one week before our family moved from Ohio to Utah).  I'm sure it would be a great apartment for someone who is single, newlyweds, or a couple with only one (baby) kid, but for us it's been cramped and depressing to say the least.  Luckily our contract is almost up and this next week we're moving to a duplex down in Provo that has three bedrooms, a great landlady, a yard, a dishwasher, and about twice the square-footage of our current place.  We looked at it once, but went back again yesterday to check it out again (the first time there was still some furniture) and while we were hanging out in our new yard, we met no less than three new neighbors who all have kids the girls' ages!  Yay!  This new place will also be amazing because we aren't expected to let our neighbors into our kitchen to do their laundry, we control our own thermostat, and our internet hookups will be in our own apartment, meaning no upstairs neighbors can A) unplug it randomly or B) use it without paying.  Also the new duplex is a legal rental property, unlike our current one.  Yes, our current apartment is that great.

Anyway, even though it's General Conference weekend (a bi-annual Mormon holiday where we feast on elaborate breakfasts and the Spirit) we're trying to get out of our old place because we hate it so that our landlords can get some other gullible fool renter ASAP and reimburse us for the rest of April's rent.  We're hoping to be completely moved in to the new place by Tuesday.  It would be sooner, but unfortunately the carpets aren't being cleaned until Monday.  In the meantime, our landlady has given us permission to move things into the kitchen, where there is no carpet, because she is great.

So it's going to be a busy weekend for us, which sucks for Will because he has a cold.  If you're in the area we'd love to have you come help, and if not, send healthy thoughts and prayers Will's way (and mine, I don't want to catch it!)

That's pretty much all, except I'm trying to get into this writing thing again.  I'm sort of at a standstill right now because I want to rewrite my old story but I need to do "world building" before I can.  I am the opposite of most fantasy writers (who get "world builder's disease" and never get around to the story itself), instead of getting caught up in the world I keep skittering away from it.  Apparently I'm waiting for it to spring-fully formed into my mind, and my mind is not cooperating.  Sad.

Anyway I think this post is long enough.  Happy Conference weekend everyone!

Writing for Charity 2012

I went to my first-ever writing conference today!  I think it was an amazing choice for a first conference; it was pretty informal and not too massive... probably 250-300 people.  Unfortunately I'm not one to put myself out there, so I only took one sneaky picture when the authors weren't looking.

My sneaky picture of the Fantasy Panel authors:
Mette Ivie Harrison, Brandon Sanderson, and Tracy and Laura Hickman
Not to be overly ecstatic, but *swoon.*

Here's how my day went:

I got there at 9am when registration opened.  I registered, got assigned to Laura Hickman's critique group (she co-writes a lot of things with her husband, Tracy Hickman, who is best known by me for his Dragonlance books, which are great), then proceeded to run around like a chicken with its head cut off because my printer ran out of EVERYTHING at midnight last night and I was three copies short of the manuscript excerpt I needed to participate in said group.  I have to say that the only reason I brought anything to share was because my mom and my friend Diane insisted, but even as I made those copies, I had no intention of having anything of mine read in front of a real author or a bunch of strangers.

At 9:30 the conference officially started off with a huge author panel led by Shannon Hale.  She is hilarious, and I'm grateful that came before the critique sessions, as it gave me a little bit of time to get used to the idea of being in a room with so many famous people and unwind.

Next were critiques.  Lucky for me, I felt a great deal of social pressure to pass my pages when everyone else did.  And you know what?  It wasn't so bad.  Everyone was really nice and I got a lot of constructive comments.  Long story short, I did not pass out.  I also really enjoyed being able to hear snippets from other aspiring authors.  There's a lot of talent out there.

I ate lunch with some girls from my critique group (which was all girls, by the way, and so was about 80% of the conference).  It was amazing to be able to talk to other writers.  Lunch may actually have been the most beneficial part of conference, as me and a few of the other girls exchanged contact info to form a critique group!  Yay!

After lunch were the workshops, which were great, especially considering that I've never taken a creative writing class in my life.  There were four, and even though they were an hour each the time went by fast because the speakers were so good. Also they gave us cookies in between, so that helped.  Then they wrapped up all the official stuff and had a book signing.  Of course, I'm too broke to buy the twenty hardcovers I wanted, but I took my Kindle instead and asked a few of them to sign the case.

Have fun deciphering!  Just kidding.  Starting at the center top and going counterclockwise:
Brandon Sanderson, Bree Despain, Lisa Mangum, Tracy Hickman, Laura Hickman, and Shannon Hale.

All in all, I had an awesome time.  Perhaps it was due to the fact that yesterday my children were the devil and I just needed a break, but I think that was only part of it.  Being able to talk about writing all day and (the most of the awesome of all) meeting people, both aspiring writers like me and well-established authors, made it unforgettable.  Seriously, it was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to go to my next conference!

One last thought: if you live in Utah and want to be a writer (or meet a bunch of awesome ones) you should go to this!  I'm pretty sure they do it every year and it's well worth the registration fee!  Here's a link to the official site and 100% of the registration money goes towards buying books for kids who don't have any!