writing style/ living in your head/ Twitter to book

Mar. 3 Writing style: I was reading “Looking back on an exciting first year as The Globe’s Travel Concierge” by John Lee in the Globe and Mail on Dec. 28, 2013.  He answers questions about travel like “I’m planning on going to New Zealand.  What should I go see?”

He says this: “And I now realize what a slow writer I am: too long spend obsessively rereading sentences everyone else sensibly scans in microseconds.”

My opinion: Sometimes I write fast, sometimes I write slowly.  It depends on the topic.  Of course, I do copy and paste articles and I then type my comments on it so it’s fast.  When I write a synopsis of a TV show, I write slower.

Mar. 4: I went to work today and looked for a job.  Now I’m bored and I need a break, so I’m going to write about TV shows.

The Vampire Diaries: Did you know this show had aired their 100^th episode?  That’s great.  A month ago I came home and turned on the TV.  The Queen Latifah show was on and I was listening to it as I was checking what was on that night.  The actor Ian Somerhalder (Damon from The Vampire Diaries) was on and mentioned how there was a 100^th ep. 

Criminal Minds: I watched Criminal Minds 200^th episode called “200.”  Here’s a little recap.  JJ and Cruz from the FBI team went to Iraq to stop terrorists back in 2011.  There was a translator named Michael Hastings (Tahmoh Penikett from Dollhouse).  Hastings got killed when their car got hit by a IED.  JJ and Cruz are now back in Washington DC in present time. 

They both get kidnapped and are tortured to get authorization codes.  Later Hastings appears and it turns out he wasn’t dead at all. 

I was on twop.com and said this:

“I thought the episode was good.  Then I came here and I see all the plot holes. 

I didn't predict that Hastings was the double agent.  I really thought it was going to be Cruz. 

I did predict Hastings couldn't really be killed.  I was thinking about Prentiss supposedly being dead when she was really alive.

I also want to add that I really thought Cruz was playing JJ and the BAU.  I have seen on Alias where Sydney is being tortured and kept in a cell with another man.  The other man was pretending to be tortured.  I thought Cruz was pretending to be tortured.

Cruz is one of the two agents to open the account, so I thought he wanted to get JJ with him.

When Tevon mentions the miscarriage and JJ looks at Cruz, I thought Cruz told Tevon.  But really, it was Hastings who overheard.”

Here’s a good recap of the episode:

http://www.ruxyn.com/2014/02/review-criminal-minds-season-9-episode.html

International Festival of Authors: I was reading this National Post article I cut out called “Michael Chabon and Junot Diaz living on the page” on Oct. 27, 2012.   It’s about the authors Michael Chabon and Junot who are at this festival.  I went to website and it’s held in Toronto in October.

http://ifoa.org/festival

Living in your head: Here is the excerpt of the article.  It’s the ending of it.  You can read the full article where I provide the link at the bottom:  

There’s a scene in “Otravida, Otravez,” one of the stories in Díaz’s new collection, when the narrator, looking at her friend, who gave up both her husband and children when she came to the United States, says she “understands what has to be sacrificed on a voyage.” I ask if either of them have sacrificed anything to make it.

“There’s few people who would argue that one does not have to cut a deal with reality to spend so much time on these projects,” Díaz says. “Whether you’re a young artist, or you’re an artist late in their career, you have made a f–king deal with reality. You’re not going to be in the world as much as a normal person, I don’t think. Ninety-nine per cent of my life has been lived in pages. It’s OK. One wins, one feels like they’ve published books, we get reviewed, we go on tour. That’s wonderful. But let’s be real: You give up a lot of s–t to keep your nose in a book for 16 years. I’m not crying. I’m not a victim. But when I think about the larger things, I think about the years of lived life that have gone into [the books].”

“And you lose the ability, after a while, to actually live life, to engage,” Chabon says. “It becomes to such a habit to remain at a certain distance that it can be hard to bridge that distance, to come back out again. You’re always observing and note-taking.”

“You can never account for the things that you have lost when you weren’t paying attention,” Díaz says. “All my relationships that have gone away from me — how many of them were because I wasn’t paying attention to them instead of paying attention to the books? And there’s no accounting for some stuff. I don’t even have a full bill yet.”
“It will be presented in time, no doubt,” Chabon says.
Díaz agrees. “It certainly will.”

http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/10/26/michael-chabon-and-junot-diaz/

Mar. 7 Twitter to book: I cut out this article “Gaining readers one tweet at a time” by Misty Harris on Jul. 31, 2011.  Here are excerpts from the article:

“As recently as five years ago, authors would create an online presence to stay connected with existing fans; today, an online presence is what's generating fans in the first place, with readers discovering novelists' work after becoming besotted with their tweets.”

"I (have) had people show up to readings saying that they didn't even know I wrote books, and that they were followers from Twitter," says Crane, who joined the site 2-1/2 years ago. "The proof is already in the pudding right there."

Crane, whose tweets might be described as Dorothy Parker meets 90210 (a show for which she's written), is hoping to see a Twitter salesbump for her latest book With a Little Luck.

“…publishers won't spend money on promoting you unless you are one of five people," says Crane, wryly noting she isn't one of those five. "So I trot my wares out there like the Little Engine that Could."

"a bit like a pyramid scheme of publicity,"

"There is something wonderfully liberating about being social with tens of thousands of people at once, without actually having to be around any of them," Crane quips.

Bestselling Canadian author Neil Pasricha says he's regularly approached by people at readings who first discovered him on Twitter - a phenomenon he finds amusing, given that the micro-writing site traffics in the tiny.

"A giant piece of dead tree in a local library is not instant, you have to go somewhere to get it, it's thick, it doesn't update - it's pretty much the exact opposite medium," says Pasricha, author of The Book of (Even More) Awesome. "But there's an important similarity, and that's that people on Twitter like to be entertained and they're willing to read."

"I don't invent characters. I invite strangers. Out of my subconscious.  Then cut them slack, to see what they'll do."-@greatdismal (William Gibson)

My opinion: I like the above tweet.  I’m going to put that in my inspirational quotes.

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/archives/story.html?id=44eb6ac5-9c79-47d9-964c-c9d129322343