I’ve always loved the movies, new, old, classic and foreign, but I haven’t always loved the Academy Awards. I started watching them when I was a kid, then after college on and off, depending on the movies I’d seen that year, and if I saw a lot, then I’d watch to root for my favorite, much as a sports enthusiast might root for their playoff picks. If I thought them all bad, I’d skip that year. This particular year I happened to see four out of the nine movies nominated for Best Picture, and it would’ve been five, had I been able to find a theater nearby showing The Artist. (Oooh! In the course of doing a search for the trailer, I just found one nearby that’s showing it! Guess I’ll be going to the movies this weekend!!) This year, more than any other, I’m rooting for The Help, and the wonderful Viola Davis, an actress whose character literally gave me goosebumps as I watched her closing performance. If that wasn’t great acting, I don’t know anything, and although I enjoyed the book, I must say this movie is even better.  Perhaps because seeing the pain and humiliation on the maids’ faces made the story so much more palpable, and so much more moving.

So that’s my choice, and I stand by it. In this day of instant downloads, home theaters and Blu-Ray, it’s so much more simple to wait for the video to come out and watch it in the comfort of your own livingroom (or within the convenience of your phone or tablet). Old school or what, there’s just something magical seeing an art form in its intended medium, the same as viewing fine art at a gallery, the written word as printed, music at a concert hall. As for the medium of–okay, film, it’s having my eyes fixed upon the wide screen, the sound swirling around me as I’m lost in the drama, being one of those wonderful people out there in the dark.

Trudy

Attending Editors

Angela Polidoro
Renee Rocco
Amy Pierpont(Panel Only)
Jillian Bell
Stacy Boyd
Laurel Symonds
Kris Jacen
Nina Bruhns – Web appts
Stacy Abrams
Tere Michaels
Lori Perkins
Tessa Woodward
Monique Patterson

Random House
Lyrical Press
Grand Central Publishing
Ellora’s Cave
Harlequin Enterprises
HarperCollins Childrens
MLRPress/Passion in Print/ Featherweight Press
Entangled Publishing
Entangled Publishing
Loose-Id
Ravenous Romance
Avon/HarperCollins
St. Martin’s Press

Yesterday the New Jersey Assembly passed, along party lines, the Marriage Equality bill, that the Senate easily passed Monday. Amidst pleading from its supporters to make history, Gov. Christie promised a “swift” veto, proposing instead to let the voters decide with a vote this fall.

Hm…this fall. How convenient. Decide this issue on the day that voters will also be picking the next president, the day before the day that Gov. Christie is finally released from the stranglehold this Republican primary has had on his ability to govern for all New Jerseyans, not only for those who agree with the national Conservative agenda. The same national agenda that sparkles like a brass ring within the Governor’s reach, whispering Vice President Christie…Attorney General Christie…Christie, 2016… so loud it’s drowning out not only his common sense, but his common decency.

Equal protection under the law is not a right only for heterosexuals, but for everyone, the same basic human right that governed the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. Ask another prominent Republican, another Vice-President of a previous administration if he believes his gay daughter deserves the same basic civil rights as he. I believe his answer would be surprising. But then again, he’s no longer running for anything.

Trudy

UPDATE 6:35 PM – Gov. Chris Christie vetoes Marriage Equality Bill.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and your Sweetie!

Big smooch,

Trudy

I’m scratching my scalp while I’m writing this if so gave me the creeps. Not to say that the Liberal Arts building is a cockroach spawning ground, but that drain in the middle of the bathroom had to be like its own private Turnpike direct to my trousers. But of all times, why would it have pick then, in that particular place to warm its little prehistoric exoskeleton? Maybe because this creepy-crawly scenario needs to be in a book of mine somewhere. Just goes to show, you never know when a new writing prompt will hit you. Or crawl up your pantleg.

Smooch,

Trudy

Could it b because Old Boz still has a thing or two he can teach us?

Hm…I wonder. I remember back to high school when as a freshman I was forced to read Great Expectations. I must confess, I didn’t enjoy it, and this coming from a person who read two to three novels a week, including the complete Little Women series and all of the Bronte sisters novels. I don’t know what it was, maybe it was the convoluted character names, Pip and Pocket and Pumblechook, or his somewhat chauvinistic view or women, or those coincidences that always seem so much a part of the plot. In the end, outside of A Christmas Carol, I never read another Dickens book again. And never really pondered on what I was missing, as there were so many other authors out there–American ones such as Twain and Wharton as well as that English goddess, the divine Miss Austen–that enamored me so much more. But still, I knew there was some knowledge I could take away from Mr. Dickens.

Perhaps it took me until I was writing and selling books myself to figure it out. There’s a ton of value in how cleverly and eponymously you name your characters, that there’s something to be said for the cliffhanger ending (Dickens, who serialized many of his books by writing them episodically, was said to have caused near-riots at the bookstores when the latest chapters of his books came in, many avid readers even storming the docks as the ship arrived from England), and of course, self-promotion, as he used book tours and public readings, some of which featured popular actors of the day reading the parts, nearly up until the day he died.

So what do I glean from all this? That Mr. Dickens seemed to have written the book on so many of the strategies we writers take for granted today. That although these tactics now seem givens they’re so obvious, he was the one who invented them. But the funny thing about it is they still work, and that what was considered popular entertainment back then–as popular as the next installment of Downton Abbey is to today’s serial fans–Dickens’ work is now widely regarded as literature. Literature.

Maybe there’s hope for me yet.

Trudy

5:30 – Alarm rings. Roll over, hit snooze.

5:31 – Cat finds ball. Ignore tinkly bell and fall back asleep.

5:40 - Alarm rings again. Cat jumps on face. Swat at cat. Miss cat. Knock over alarm. Alarm stops by default. Pull pillow over head. Fall back to sleep.

5:44 – Dream of jingle bells.

5:49:58 – Cat pulls curtain and curtain rod from window, knocks alarm from night table.

5:50 – Alarm rings. Give up, get up and go to bathroom. Tinkly sound emanates from bedroom.

5:55 – Feed cat.

5:58 – Bowl of Cheerios and sliced banana. Get newspaper while cereal soggies.

6:03 – 6:14 – Front page, editorials, comics, horoscope. Take vitamins.

6:15 – 6:19 – “Morning Joe.”

6:20 – 6:47 – Switch to TCM while “Joe” is on a commercial break and become embroiled in  pre-code Jean Harlow/Clark Gable rom-com until cat leaps into window at neighbor’s cat reminding you to look toward wall clock.

6:48 – Make cup of tea; visit bathroom while boiling, turning on laptop en route. Brush teeth. Spy book on back of toilet. Finish reading chapter started the night before.

6: 54 – Return book to back of toilet.

6:55 – Retrieve tea and head toward office.

6:56 – Visit several email accounts and return email, re: 3 student crises, web course designer, critique partner. Email agent. Sneak peek at Facebook, Twitter, check blog.

7: 18 - Bring up work-in-progress. Shrink work-in-progress. Bring up FreeCell. One therapeutic game to get brain functioning. Or two. Three. Four at the most.

7:39 – Bring up work-in-progress. Remember need to look up nautical term first. Shrink WIP; go online, homepage, CNN. Check if world blew up the night before. Switch to Google. Find term. Check FB really quick. Check email. Answer email. One more FreeCell. Return to WIP.

8:07 – Emergency email from critique partner; another rejection. Forestall imminent artistic self-thrashing and proceed to buck-up. Check outgoing email for errors, grammatical and toe-stepping. Email is replied to in less than a minute. Send another buck-up complete with happy emoticons. Check Twitter.

8:47 – Return to WIP. Stomach growls. Go to kitchen and make toast, toss cat teeth crunchy treats. Stare out window at trash truck across the lake as toast toasts. Remember forgot to put out trash. Run out door in robe. Return to smoke alarm blaring from toast stuck in toaster. Open windows. Toss toast. Fan.

9:05 – Return to office and WIP. Email from agent. Need info. Retrieve info and email. Return to WIP. See cat had jumped on keyboard and now there’s kmsadslvy]e0-vn’aey9-3 rya2932f all over page 78. 79. 80. 81———————

9:06 – 9:12 – Clean up WIP. Phone rings. Seems forgot to turn off phone.

9:13 – 9:51 – Chat and play solitaire.

9:52 – Return to WIP. Take sip of tea, notice it’s cold. Go to kitchen to reheat tea. While heating eat forkful of cold spaghetti from fridge. One more. Another. Mmmm….

9:58 – Return to office. Pick up hand weights. Lift. Throw out back. Lay on floor to stretch out. Cat jumps on stomach. Yelp. Swat at cat. Miss. Cat circles head, purring. Melt.

10:10 – Remember forgot tea in microwave. Go to kitchen to retrieve. Spy calendar and see it’s wrong day for trash on my street. Go to street to retrieve trash can so don’t look like an idiot. Return to kitchen and retrieve tea. Cold again. Check MSNBC on TV as tea reheats. Go to HBO during commercial break.

Noon – Get up to retrieve tea as credits roll for “Get Him to the Greek.” Dump tea; go to fridge and retrieve pot of spaghetti from fridge. Take to office, shrink WIP and go to Slate.com and read “Dear Prudence” while eating cold pasta with fingers. Phone rings. Still forgot to turn off. Chat while licking fingers.

12:49  – Find Lindt Dark Chocolate Truffle from Christmas stash in desk while rearranging desk tray while still on the phone. Eat, toss wrapper at trash. Miss.

12:50 – Cat finds missed wrapper. Grabs in mouth. Runs from room.

12:51 – Hear a crashing sound from bedroom. Ring off from phone call. Go to bedroom. Jewelry box and entire contents is now on floor, truffle wrapper on top. Scoop contents, return to box, return box to dresser. Toss wrapper. Cat missing. Eye bed, still unmade.

12:52 – Call day a wash. Return to bed. Bed never so comfortable…

12: 59 – Cat finds ball.

Trudy

Case in point, this friend of mine whose short story I was giving a read-through this past weekend before she submitted it to her agent. A publisher was interested, but only if she lengthened it to novella. She had written it a few years back, before she won some awards and published three novels. She was pretty satisfied how the rewrite turned out, but she was still short in word count, so she asked me if I could suggest places where she might lengthen it. I said sure, offering to also give it a line-edit while I was at it. Since she’s a pretty experienced writer, I thought I’d have it done in a snap.

I was wrong.

By page four, each screen was so covered in edits and Track Changes suggestions I gave up. If I didn’t she’d either hate me or think I was trying to rewrite her book. Which I honestly wasn’t, as the plot was tight, and what was going on in the first scene piqued my interest. But it was so static, so removed, so telling and not showing it read like a laundry list and was, quite frankly, dull. The thing was it didn’t have to be, as this writer knows how to write it better, and has proved over and over she could do it. The thing was, she was working on an old manuscript, and quite methodically, allowed the logic of her less seasoned way of writing stand in the first scene, logic from before she had the benefit of an editor to draw out the more descriptive writer inside her. But as any experienced novelist knows, if you don’t make the first scene pop, you’re never going to get the reader – or the editor – to the next. And hers just wasn’t happening. To prove my point even further, I skipped ahead to a scene she had just added, which clipped along and sizzled with the passion I had long expected from her. But being so close to the work, she couldn’t see it. And understandably hit the roof when my wall-to-wall edits smacked her in the face.

Seeing that, it’s really easy to feel crushed, to declare yourself a terrible writer, to sink to the depths of suckidom. To swear up and down and four ways to Tuesday you’ll never write again. Period. But that’s such a copout, when really all you have to do is do the work. Writers think they write for their readers, but surprise! In the beginning, you’re really writing for your editor, as without that third eye, chances are, you’re never going to be good enough to get it out to your audience. We think we’re all fabulous because we have this scenario playing out in 3D in our heads and don’t realize what we leave out, because our brains are compensating for the omissions. But it takes an experienced editor to visualize those nuances and draw them out from the writer, making our work more complete and in the end, what we all want–salable.

Now get to work.

Trudy

Here’s another. Feel free to steal for your wallpaper.

Trudy

As a liberal, I must say there are a few things that I’d like to hear in President Obama’s speech tonight, things that have been on the back burner for too long now. As an educator and a member of the fading middle class, I’d like to see an increase in Pell Grants and a new push for the Jobs program, some of the budget to go for infrastructure repair (aided by steel forged in the U.S. and not China) funded by more decreases in military spending, and a new push toward universal health care, maybe even using Romneycare as an example. Instead of the scientific de-evolution the GOP seems bent on, I’d like to see a reawakening in the study of climate change, new energy, medicine, information and all forms of research and development, so the U.S. once again leads the world in technology. And if we’re going to give tax breaks to anyone it should be the ones who are actually creating something, be it products or jobs, and not to the ones simply making money off of money.

Just a few simple requests. That’s not too much to ask, is it? Sure, the United States is the land of opportunity, and we should have the freedom to pursue it. But that should include every one of us, and not only the ones who can pay to play atop the field.

Trudy