A Resolution Worth More Books Later

I already have a deal with myself not to buy anymore underwear this year, since one of my last 2010 purchases rendered my entire unmentionables budget underground, possibly into a few inches of metaphorical monetary permafrost. I have no regrets on this.

But, what I did realize, during a Costco trip over the weekend, was that I had already an ENORMOUS collection of books for someone my age and it's likely to get bigger, never smaller, no matter how many I give away, donate to organizations and charities, and even lose due to loaning out but no returns from family, friends, acquaintances, and enemies (here's looking at you, kid?). I also have no regrets here but what I did start to think about concerned all of my yet-to-be-read copies of literature. Just like when one buys some pieces of clothes and still has tags on them a year later because an occasion to wear them has not yet come around, my book purchases sit on the shelf and wait for me to take them out to read, and wait and wait and wait.

Until now. I realized any more books I want to get, whether it's to be purchased or borrowed from the library, need to wait, because the ones on my shelves are already languishing. I'll take pictures, write endless lists, do anything for these not yet in my possession, just to be remembered, for the day that I can get new books.

Currently, my set up here in California has no rhyme or reason, but at least I know to an extent which books I've read already or started on, and which books I haven't even touched yet. (My collection's not THAT big. Yet.) In New York, before I started yanking books from every which way off for the big move, I had a shelf dedicated for books I had not yet read, another shelf for those that I like to read over and over again, and a shelf where I was giving the books away over time for various reasons (e.g. might not have read the books to completion because I really didn't want to waste my time any further). (I think my parents will be glad when my books completely leave their home, but for now, the majority of them sit in boxes in their closet or remain on shelves in various spots of the house.)

So, with that said, right now, I'm reading the following:

-Summerland, Michael Chabon

I've recently finished:

-The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz

-The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

-Forgive My Fins, Tera Lynn Childs

I will be reading (because they're due soon)

-Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton

-Seventh Son, Orson Scott Card

I'm looking to write a little review about The Secret Life of Bees when there's some breathing room again on my schedule; for now, I thought I'd just sit on my thoughts about it and go about some other business in the meantime.

The past makes your present, yes? Maybe. We'll see.

I was working on my writing but multitasking. One thing led to another after chatting with Britta about her interest in film, and now here I am, writing of an experience (out of many, but not that much, considering my age) that I know by now is rare within New York City, and rarer still for those that are outside of the Concrete Jungle.

I want to express my thanks on the internet (haha, I don't find anything wrong with this, considering my heavy editing and the lack of details, thank you very much) for Dr. Weinberger and her intense interest in her students' lives. In my case, I believe she jumped through hoops during a number of lunch periods, to get me to do something for the summer in 2003. (I mean, I think I took up a lot of her time in the first place just by invading her guidance office when I was only a student in her english class, not even one under her guidance concerning graduation and grades.)

During those times, we looked at summer programs listed by the guidance department in a packet. I remember her asking me point blank about my interests, just to get the search started, and frankly, the suggestion of filmmaking (from her) was probably more of a surprise than anything (to me)- I only liked watching them at the time, but sure, why not? Then, after looking at the lists, we made phone inquiries.

Serendipitously, while she was looking for the contact for Columbia U's summer film program for high school students, she ended up getting in touch with NY Film Academy about their program. From what I can remember, it was due to a switchboard mistake. She told me to try talking to these folks at NY Film Academy for a way to help with tuition costs for the program and to not get my hopes up because it was a private company, and she knew that my parents probably couldn't afford their prices out of their own pockets by themselves. I went along with it, I didn't mind, and I THINK I told my parents about what was happening concerning that.

A conversation with the filmmaking school led me to have a little extra work for a particular week. I took a couple of trips down to Union Square where their headquarters are still housed (as of the time of my writing this) and toured it a bit. At the end of the tour, I was asked about my interest within a conversation with the coordinator, and following my response, I was then asked to write a script, no strict format, just a scene. I sent it via e-mail, as per their request. (That script's scene? Well, I can't admit this here. Ask me in passing, if you want; as of now, I don't want to write about it.)

This was where serendipity came in again: Dr. Weinberger and I were speaking of what happened and again, she told me that it was only a chance to take - and maybe we should look up other programs while we're at it? But, sure enough, the coordinator eventually called back and told me that arrangements were made so that it was possible for me to attend a summer session in the city-based location for high schoolers. She was pleased for me and glad, it was something to go on my college application, after all, and would keep me busy.

That summer, I met some really good people and I still keep in touch with one every so often, when we're not busy with our lives. But, actually, besides having attended the program, I'm thinking I'm even gladder to have had Dr. Weinberger that year as an Honors English class teacher in the first place. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have had that part of my memories, experiences, and current knowledge, etc.

I hope you're doing well, teacher.

P. S. A note about a side effect to this experience that might also serve as a warning to those interested in becoming deeply involved in ANY field as a hobbyist or otherwise: While I watch movies, I get drawn into thinking about how they might have shot a fascinating scene and how many times they could have shot it, then how it could have been edited, and it can become a source of annoyance when I drag other people into a dialogue with me about what we had been watching at the time.

P. P. S. If you have NEGATIVE commentary about the teacher, keep it to yourselves or speak of it somewhere else, not here - let's keep it only POSITIVE.

Happy New Year, what's up?

Thank you for reading! I appreciate your attention and wish you a healthy and beautiful new year, filled with positivity. Don't let the 2012 doom-sayers get you down - for one, I believe 2012 is going to be a different story, so make sure your 2011 is exactly what you want it to be for yourself and nothing less, before 2012 comes in the first place.

Moving on with things, I'd like to update you all on a few of my projects.

I'm working on Short Harbingers, an online literary magazine. I have updated a little bit and am now welcoming submissions for the first issue. Please check it out: www.shortharbingers.com. If you're a writer, I welcome you to participate, and if not, please consider the literary magazine anyway - I want to be featuring visual artists, photographers, and maybe even some videos of other types of art. I'm at the beginning of this project so "the sky is the limit," as many say. I do ask that your submission have something to do with the theme. The debut issue's theme is "metamorphosis." I hope it can inspire you.

I also signed up for The Fiction Project (www.arthousecoop.com/projects/fiction) and I'm currently waiting for the book they want all participants to use. My theme is "THINGS THAT CHANGED OTHER THINGS," but they have other themes offered and if you don't want to pick one at the time of sign up, leave your selection to be a random theme and you'll get one. I left it to be random and look at that, I ended up with something about change. (Seems like a good time as any to do that, right?) I don't want to summarize what The Fiction Project is on my blog when the website has all the information, so take a look. I do want to recommend that if you are interested and know a few others that might also be interested, they offer group discounting of their fees for groups of four or more, so take advantage. If you're not a writer, take a look anyway at the website and you could find that they have other projects that could be worth your time and effort.

My writing is coming together but the final products are secret. However, I might do some mixed media stuff related to what I'm working on in the future, in the forms of pictures, sketches, collages, and/or video - just so you all can get to know a little bit about my characters and how I've been fleshing them out. We'll see- there's already a little bit of this going on but I'm not going to vocal about it as of yet.

As a last note, my workspace is so awesome (to me) that I might just take pictures of it to post up, since in some ways, I think it fits under "bookshelf porn." Also, I just want to share what I've been going through a little bit since moving and I am very proud of how the space has come together.

NaNoWriMo: Final thoughts

This year's NaNo was a bust for me, being stuck at 1,142 words, and having started days into November. Still, it was exciting to start FIFTEEN SOULS and I feel like I need to continue it! Now that I have my workstation in the house all set up nicely, I can take my progress seriously.

NaNo is a great thing to participate in, though, and I think next year I will definitely try again, hopefully with plans all up BEFORE the start. In the meantime, there's plenty of stories to work on, big and small. Besides FIFTEEN SOULS, I'm going to have to finish this short story that I started a while ago and then edit a couple of times, then try to submit it to some magazines. No clue where yet, but I want to finish it first, so I am trying not to get ahead of myself.

I know a woman who is working on her novel so earnestly that she decided to deactivate her Facebook so that it doesn't distract her. I'm taking a few leaves out of her book- I'll be sitting out of Skype and AIM for now, then later on from Facebook Chat. I'll leave my account up, since there are days where I don't even check my profile and I don't mind it at all.

In other news, I've had this migraine for two days now, and I'm wondering, when will it go away? But, it's funny that I have it right now, since FIFTEEN SOULS starts with a migraine within the story. Go figure.

BFY! Book Review: THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

So, I decided that BOLLOCKS FIC YOU! will be about what I'm reading, what I've finished reading, and what I'm currently writing. (While I'm always writing, I'm not always finishing. Sadly, there is a difference in my little world.) I also will hint at what's happening on other things I'm working on, but not as much, especially when I finally get everything set up.

I thought I'd start the great USA Thanksgiving Weekend of 2010 by giving a personal review of The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger. I watched the film months before and as a result, kept picturing Anne Hathaway as the main character Andrea. Also, in my imagination, her best friend Lily was the actress who played Lilly from The Princess Diaries. Fancy that! Good thing that the book's version of Miranda Priestly was not Meryl Streep but, rather, whomever I wanted to imagine her as according to Ms. Weisberger's writing. I want to steer away from biases like these at all costs, but I really couldn't help it, it was too easy. (This is starting to happen with the Harry Potter series, too.)

Either way, all mental pictures aside, the book's version of Andrea and Miranda Priestly felt developed for what it was: a simple, almost "popcorn," read. I had both empathy and sympathy for Andrea, especially after having had a glimpse of the fashion industry within the last year myself. Her thoughts of getting through her year-long term with the fictional magazine Runway consistently changed with the progression of the book. I thought that was a really good thing to do- I saw the progression of Andrea's personality go from someone who was unaware of the big city life and too innocent of what she was getting into to a person who was on her way to being a worldly human being, but definitely was still far and away from it at the end.

The antagonist Miranda made me laugh. Her demands were so absurd and her personality was awful. I loved it, she was definitely a great villain to have in a story. It's too easy to create a villain and just have them throw one bad thing after the other at the protagonist without justification. The background for Miranda also gave Andrea a foundation to find out what she wanted out of her life and rounded out Miranda just a little bit. I liked the timing of revealing the meaningful bits through the research in the beginning, chatter between characters, and even Miranda herself admitting what a shadow of her former self might have been. I say "might," since the conversation with her admitting this happened to be when she and Andrea are together alone in a car and she is still cold and inexpressive, according to Andrea's observations of the event - a bias that the book understandably has, considering everything has been written to be in Andrea's point of view.

Supportive characters were important in this book, too. Andrea's immediate family kind of served as a contrast to Miranda Priestly's own, and appropriately, they showed up less and less throughout the novel as Miranda's role in Andrea's life expanded more and more. Alex the boyfriend was O.K. but I think even without him, Andrea functioned well and was still a good character. If anything, I think Lily was the better of the two non-familial people in Andrea's world to both interact with her and be a catalyst to Andrea's major decisions.

Having recently moved away from New York City, The Devil Wears Prada made me miss it a little bit, since the bulk of its action happened in Manhattan. I had an opportunity to see both the Hearst and Condé Nast buildings at one point, very briefly, and kept filling in mentally that the Elias-Clark Building was a combination of those two plus some other offices, but even if you haven't seen those buildings I mentioned, Ms. Weisberger describes the layout of Elias-Clark with enough precision expected from someone who only works in it and not having had anything else to do with its appearance.

I think it is an easy read, took me a total of a day to get through the entire story. I kept going on and off while reading, so I didn't just start on it today. I would recommend it for anyone above age seventeen, since some folks at that age tend to have a grasp of how post-college life might work, due to research about post-high school life or by questioning those that have already gone through college. Since this book happens to be about a woman who is coming into her first career after graduation, I would think anyone younger than a college-bound person might miss out on references or think less of what's going on between characters.

Short Harbingers

Short Harbingers
Above is the URL I mentioned in my previous entry. What's with the name? Well, this has everything to do with the upcoming online (for now) publication I've been planning. I would like to do a kind of literary magazine, the bulk of it to be concentrating on short stories, with spattering of poetry- a genre of literature I'm not very good at being picky and critical over- and, hopefully, some photography, especially those that can tell stories with the series of images, whether literally or if there's a theme going on. I figure it would be a learning process all around. So, the short stories bit is where "SHORT" comes into the name.

"HARBINGER" is a very intense word in my opinion, meaning "messenger." My intent with the publication is to deliver stories, which are messages from their authors. Whether the messages within stories are deliberate or they are totally just STORIES in someone's mind, it's all right- I believe all writing pieces are ways to deliver messages. Hence, the place of "HARBINGERS" in the name. It's also not very commonly used in the Modern English language. I note that when it is used, it usually is in a dramatic or even foreboding tone.

In the meantime, I am redirecting the URL to the my page on the aggregator, Flavors.me, which is a great site, by the way. It's easy to use, but not all social media and blogging services can be linked through it, so you have to do some exploring.

In other happenings, I've relocated and all the fun of settling down had definitely taken up a lot of my time, but now that the house is just about finished in being equipped with necessities (more or less), I will be devoting more time to myself and my writing. For example, I have chosen to put my project, FIFTEEN SOULS, as a NaNo. I doubt I'll be finishing on time, since as of this entry its word count stands at 1,142. Still, you never know. It's worth a chance and I'm finding it good for me to have started on this project.

The RETURN!

So, I have returned. Sorry for my delays. I have nothing to say about my delays.

What can you expect for the next few months from me on this blog? Quite honestly, I will be working on a number of projects by myself as well as with a few friends. In addition, I mentioned on my Twitter that I would be launching a publication. I would love to say more but I am still planning the heck out of it. Also, I have purchased a domain name and may be using it within early next year, which could mean that this blog will either get a new address or a different focus!

I am pleased that things are moving along and will provide more substance soon than just some almost-random entries on this bit of blog.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.3