KayeDacus.com

So, this is a totally random post and has nothing to do with anything but the fact that I finally went and got my hair cut for the first time in almost a year. After the salon I’d been going to shut down nearly two years ago, I’ve only had my hair cut twice, which is highly unusual for me. When I have a stylist I like, I enjoy going to the salon and getting my hair washed, cut, and styled by someone else for a change. But between losing my salon and laziness, I went from a quite short haircut to hair reaching almost to the tips of my shoulderblades in two years.

With the office move, I don’t have to be at work until noon on Monday, so I thought I’d drive around Berry Hill, the former residential area that, shortly before I moved here in 1996, turned into a boutique-store mecca. It’s maybe two miles from where I live, and it’s where my previous salon was located—the salon that had a Steel Magnolias feel to it that I loved. I figured I’d call a couple of them while I drove around to see if they could fit me in today or Monday morning. 

The first one I pulled up to not only could take me as a walk-in, but she could take me right then. So, after suffering through long, straggly hair for a year, in half an hour, I walked out with a new salon and the cut I’d been hoping for:

Well, we’ve had several “winter weather advisories” since December that have all ended up being false alarms. Ten days ago, we had one that gave us a “dusting” of snow (literally, it looked like the confectioners’ sugar sprinkled on top of a bundt cake) that closed down schools and had our office opening two hours late. Most of us were hoping this “winter weather advisory” would have the same results.

Last night, Ruth and a couple of other friends and I had made plans to meet in Green Hills to see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day at 7:30. We met for dinner at six. It was cold, but not freezing, with a fine mist of rain. At 7:15, when we walked around the corner to the theater, we could tell the precipitation had changed over to frozen, but it was still very fine and wasn’t sticking to anything.

But when we came out at 9:30 . . .

(from WSMV.com)

(from WSMV.com)

(From Tennessean.com—This is what I had to drive home on last night. Ruth ended up staying the night at my house because it was too dangerous for her to drive the additional thirty or forty miles to get all the way home to Murfreesboro.)

(from WSMV.com—This is very much what my front yard looked like early this morning.)

(from WSMV.com—The sun came out around eleven o’clock, and though the temperature hadn’t made it above freezing at that time, because of the sun and the fact we haven’t had below-freezing temperatures for a couple of weeks, the snow rapidly started melting, much to the delight of our birds.)

I went to the library at 12:45 to pick up a few writing-craft books for the upcoming “Hooking the Reader” series (for more info, click on UPCOMING SERIES at the top of the page), and by the time I got back at 1:30, the snow was gone everywhere in my yard except the places still in the shade.

This is the kind of snow that would have been nice to have had during the week to get a “snow day” from work. But unfortunately, coming last night, it meant we had to reschedule our monthly MTCW meeting—at which it looked like we might have had a record attendance—for next week,  when many of our members already have commitments. But better we all stayed safe and warm.

Oh, by the way, the movie was FABULOUS! I’m seriously considering sneaking out and seeing it again this weekend . . . Ciaran Hinds is so romantic!

Last week, I updated my reading goals—and I’m doing better than I’d thought. So this weekend, I’m going to revisit my Writing Goals for 2008:

1. Send in four applications to teach at the ACFW conference: Showing vs. Telling, Critical Reading, Critiquing, and either POV or Setting. DONE

2. Turn in revisions on Happy Endings Inc. Stand-In Groom early. I learned I will not receive changes from Barbour until around March 1. But I have printed the full ms and will start copy editing it this weekend. I have already made changes to the scenes where Major and Meredith (the hero/heroine in Menu for Romance) appear.

3. Volunteer as a judge in the ACFW Genesis contest. DONE. I’ll be judging in the contemporary and historical romance categories.

4. Complete A Major Event Inc. by June 30, 2008 to submit to Barbour by the first week of July. Yikes. Need to get to work on this. So far, all I’ve completed are the first three chapters. I did do some brainstorming this past week to nail down some important plot points, so hopefully, since this is a long weekend for me, I’ll be able to meet my goal of getting chapters 4–6 out to the crit partners this coming week.

5. Complete revisions on Ransome’s Honor; begin work on Ransome’s Crossing. The second draft of RH is complete and has been critiqued, and the proposal went to Chip at the beginning of February. Now I need to stitch together the chapter files, make a few more minor revisions, and the ms. will be in a good enough condition that I’ll be confident in sending it out to editors who request the full. I have made a couple of attempts at starting RC, but nothing that has led me to a point where I feel like it’s a strong opening.

6. Develop and implement pre-release marketing plan for HEI. Still in the “thinking about it” phase on this.

7. Attend Alumni weekend at SHU—possibly co-teach a workshop. I know the co-teaching of the workshop isn’t going to happen. I’m not sure this is the wisest way to spend my money (or vacation time) this year, so I’m still praying about it. But I’ll need to make a decision soon if I’m going to get a hotel room anywhere within about 10-20 miles of Greensburg.

8. Pitch the Ransome Trilogy to at least four editors at ACFW conference. As mentioned above, I sent the proposal to Chip a couple of weeks ago. If it hasn’t sold by time of the conference, I’ll be sure to do this then.

9. Sell the Ransome Trilogy. See #8

10. Schedule at least one book signing event for January 2009 (yes, I realize that’s next year, but the work will have to be done this year). See #6

Well, I’ve been waging an internal debate as to whether or not to blog about this, but having seen that there are some out there of similiar persuasion as I, I decided to go ahead and have my say. Some of you may or may not agree, and I’d love for you to post your comments—you won’t offend me. I know this is just a matter of opinion.

Persuasion is my favorite of Jane Austen’s six completed novels. This should come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about my Ransome trilogy, which was partly inspired by Persuasion (and partly by Horatio Hornblower). It is by far the most mature of her work, no pun intended given that the heroine is twenty-seven when the book opens. The storytelling is tighter, the pace faster, the characters—all of the characters—better developed.

That said, I do not like the newest film version of Persuasion which aired on PBS this weekend. I know that there are lots of women out there this week just raving over it and how wonderful it was. But there are many things to which I take issue in this fiasco of a film:

1. Sally Hawkins (”Anne Elliot”): In the book, though Anne is pained by Frederick’s return after having broken her engagement to him eight years before, she does not sit around pouting all the time. She has some spunk, some personality, some backbone. She isn’t the mopey, sulking character who STARES AT THE CAMERA (for no apparent reason). Her forebearance was born out of what little self-worth she had: she turned him down, therefore who was she to begrudge him finding a suitable (if silly) wife in Louisa Musgrove? I know that much of this is the director’s fault, but there seems to be no sign of life in the actress’s eyes at any point in time in the movie. Even in the end (which I’ll get to in a minute), she looks like a dead fish when Frederick kisses her. There’s also a line in the book after she joins her family in Bath when her father remarks upon how much fresher, younger, better (don’t remember the exact adjective) she looks. But in this film, her look never changes.

Sally Hawkins is a runny-nosed Anne Elliot . . . effective at times, but at too many others, she surrenders to a wide variety of vocal mannerisms and facial tics. At the end of the film, as she is about to kiss Wentworth (oh, come on, you always knew how it comes out), her mouth twitches like a bass zeroing in on a tasty side order of plankton as her face moves slowly toward its target. David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle, 1/11/08

2. Direction/Cinematography: I read somewhere that this version was filmed entirely with hand-held cameras. The jostling and shaking was more reminiscent of an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street than a BBC period piece. Then there were the times (already mentioned) when Sally Hawkins stares at the camera, sans expression, sans dialogue, which just made it creepy and annoying. Also, the scenes and cuts were so quick and short (why couldn’t the length have been extended to two hours??) that there was never a chance to just enjoy the scenery or the characters or the costumes or anything.

3. Poor Character Development: Because of the jumping from scene to scene, none of the characters are allowed to be sufficiently developed–especially the secondary characters. Where was Frederick’s jealousy over Anne seeming to become close to Benwick when in Lyme? What about Anne’s fear that Frederick was as good as engaged to Louisa when she left them all for Bath? What about Mr. Elliot—he seemed only an afterthought in this version? Lady Russell—who is the one who actually convinced Anne to break off her engagement? Admiral and Mrs. Croft? Henrietta and Charles Hayter? Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove, who treated Anne more like a daughter than her own father? Even Mary and Charles Musgrove get a short shrift in this one. This novel has some of the deepest characterization Austen ever developed. This film loses all of it.

4. Rupert Penry-Jones (”Frederick Wentworth”): I’m sorry, but some young, blond guy with no experience in his face, no sense of humor, no indication that he has anything of the sailor about him will ever be a convincing Frederick Wentworth. Certainly, he is good looking, and wears the period costumes quite well. But he reminded me more of Samuel West, who played Mr. Elliot in the 1995 version, than he did of a genuine Frederick Wentworth. I’m not so stuck on Ciaran Hinds being the “ultimate” Wentworth that I wasn’t open to the possibility of liking someone else in the role. It’ll just have to be someone other than Rupert Penry-Jones for me (Karl Urban, anyone?).

But Penry-Jones is far too pretty to be Wentworth. He doesn’t have wisdom and pain written into the lines of his face, as did Ciarán Hinds as Wentworth in the 1995 version - indeed, he has no lines in his face. Matthew Gilbert, the Boston Globe, 1/12/08

5. Changes to the Story: I know that any adaptation of a novel is going to require some divergence from the original source material, either because of the limitations of time or to translate what makes sense on the page but won’t on-screen. But they didn’t just alter the story to fit the length of the film—they actually altered the story structure. The most glaring and heinous crime committed against the novel was the screenwriter’s decision to eliminate the most emotional and crucial scene of the book by transplanting Anne’s “we love longest when all hope is gone” dialogue to two snippets in a conversation with Benwick in Lyme—which Wentworth doesn’t even hear. The scene when Frederick overhears Anne and Capt. Harville having the conversation about women loving longest when all hope is gone is the most emotional scene Jane Austen ever wrote—and is what led Frederick to writing her the note telling her he still loved her and that hope still remained for a reconciliation. They also managed to belie the TITLE OF THE BOOK by changing it so that her father is the one who insisted she break her engagement to Frederick years ago, instead of Anne’s being persuaded by Lady Russell to do so because they were both young, he had nothing to offer, and Anne would just be a burden to him because he had no way to support her. Were they trying to imply that the Anne in the book is weak because she gave into this persuasion—that the viewing audience would only like her if she’d had to break the engagement because of her father’s insistence? That to me is a clear indication that no one involved with this project truly understands the nuances of the novel and what the whole story is about!

6. The Absolutely Hacked-up, Mangled, Not-right Ending: I’ve already gotten into some of this above. When I heard the lines from the climax of the story had been dropped into an insignificant throw-away earlier in the movie, I started getting concerned. Then, when the end finally did come, it was almost as if the filmmakers decided they hadn’t liked the way the book ended so they wrote an almost completely different ending! As I’ve said, the scene in the hotel in Bath when Frederick overhears Anne’s thinly veiled confession that she still loves him (while she’s still talking to Harville) is one of the most poignant, romantic scenes ever written in the history of romance novels! As a lover of Jane Austen’s work, and a scholar of the time period, to see Anne Elliot literally running through the streets of Bath was bordering on offensive—not to mention ridiculous, if they’d just followed the actual ending of the book. And I want you to show me where in the book that he buys her a house! Sure, it doesn’t say that they sailed off into the sunset together, either, but within months of this book, England was once again at war with France (after Bonaparte escaped from Elba—which is mentioned in the 1995 version). I don’t know that Anne would have actually sailed with him, but after the discussion in the book (and the 1995 movie) that Sophie had traveled with Admiral Croft on most of his ships, it’s a much more logical leap to see them on the deck of his ship than dancing in the front yard of a manor house. It’s totally out of character for Frederick Wentworth—his life was the Royal Navy . . . okay, maybe I’m putting a little too much of William Ransome into his character, but still. I was more disappointed with the ending of this movie more than anything else about it.

So, that’s my take on the newest film version of Persuasion. Sure, I’ll buy it when it comes out on DVD, simply because that’s my Austen fixation. And in further viewings, I might find things I like about it. But for now, the 1995 Ciaran Hinds/Amanda Root version remains firmly afixed at the top of my list of favorite Austen films.

. . . rubbing it in a little more:

(Just in case you don’t get it . . . with Ohio State’s loss to LSU in the National Championship game, they are now 0–9 against SEC teams in bowl games.)

To vote for the new title of my upcoming novel, click here.

This is the year of accountability for me. I haven’t always set goals for myself at the beginning of the year; sometimes, it’s more of a wishlist/prayer (Lord, please let this be the year that I meet my future husband.), while other times, it’s a longer-term goal (in 2000, I set a goal of being finished with school, in a career-path editorial job, and making strides in my writing career by the time I was 35. All of those things happened when I was 35).

This year, as I’ve already posted, I’m making my goals for the year public, because I want accountability. When I make goals but don’t tell anyone else about them, it’s easy to give up on them because no one else will be disappointed or think less of me because I’ve quit. So, in addition to my reading goals and writing/writing-career goals for 2008, here are goals for what I’d like to achieve in my personal life this year:

1. Become active in church again. Surprisingly, this is a difficult area of my life. I attend a relatively large church that doesn’t have a singles ministry. Even though I’ve enjoyed singing in the choir and the intellectual and spiritual stimulation I’ve gotten from the Sunday school class I’ve attended there (couples ages 50+), ever since my back went out this past fall, I’ve attended church only sporadically (though the weeks I don’t go, I do at least watch the worship service on TV). I know that my spiritual health is flagging because of this, but I also struggle with loneliness more when I’m at church than when I’m not. I know that God called me to this church, and I love the people there. But there’s definitely some spiritual warfare going on in my heart that I’m allowing to keep me away from the one place where I can overcome it.

2. Become a better housekeeper. “Clean up this pig sty!” was something I heard at least once a week growing up. I haven’t gotten much better since I’ve been an adult. Why? Pretty much because I’m lazy and a procrastinator. But I’ve recently volunteered my house for a monthly creative/brainstorming meeting for my local writing group, and I don’t want to have to spend all of the weekend prior to the meeting cleaning the house. So my goal is to spend at least thirty minutes a day cleaning/organizing, so that I’m not killing myself (nor putting my back out again) to make the house presentable when someone comes over. Which leads to . . .

3. Become more hospitable with inviting people over. Hospitality is always one of my lowest scores whenever I take a spiritual-gifts survey (along with giving and mercy—all three of which in my mind are tied together). I have already taken one step in offering my house as the place for this new monthly meeting. But I need to be better about inviting friends over for lunch/dinner before or after we go see a movie at the theater near my house, or having friends over to watch movies more often. Again, this is tied very closely to #2.

4. Lose weight. I know, it’s the oldest January cliche that exists. But I had set this goal before Christmas—and then had even more motivation thrown in my face nearly every day over the holiday as I was surrounded by aunts and cousins who’ve all lost weight (between 30–60 pounds!) and look fabulous. It made me very self-conscious . . . I meant to lose weight in 2007. I even tried to start low carb back last May. But I gave up really easily. (Again, lazy and procrastinator.) So Tuesday, I cut out the carbs—as well as caffeine to see if that will help bring my blood pressure down—and today I start back to the gym. My ideal goal is to lose between 80–90 pounds by the ACFW conference in September—but only if I can do it healthily. Aside from the motivation of wanting to lose the low self-esteem that comes from being morbidly obese—knowing I have no stamina to go out and do things, knowing that I’m the person everyone dreads having to sit next to on an airplane (and being uncomfortable on an airplane myself), wondering if a chair that has arms is going to be wide enough for me—my two main motivations for losing weight are to get my blood pressure down (it’s still around 140/80 even on two medications) and alleviate my back pain. Aside from the low-carb lifestyle, the most tangible part of this goal is that I commit to going to the YMCA down the street from the office to walk the treadmill/elliptical and do strength training twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays), and to the downtown location to swim for an hour at least twice a week (most likely Saturday and Sunday afternoons, though I might try the water aerobics class on Monday evenings).

5. Buy no new clothing this year. I’m talking about tops, jeans, skirts, slacks, etc. I am so bad about spending money on clothing, mainly because I’m not happy with the way the clothes I currently have fit me (or because they don’t fit me)—unless I lose enough weight that no clothes I currently own still fit me. I have a closet full of clothes that I haven’t been able to wear for several years because I’ve slowly been putting on pounds until I am now barely fitting into size 28W jeans and have been buying size 30/32W tops because they’re looser and more comfortable. At this size, it will take losing about 30 pounds to go down one size—but when I do, I’ll be able to “go shopping” in my own closet and get back into some items that were my favorites when I could wear them, as well as stuff that’s practically brand-new, because I bought it thinking, I’m going to lose weight and be able to wear this. This one is a precursor, and part of . . .

6. Set a budget and live by it. I’m an impulse buyer and not someone who has ever been able to effectively save money. Now that I have one book under contract and (prayerfully) more to come, it would be so easy for me to take that advance and just blow it on things I want (like a TV with a remote that actually works, every DVD I feel like is missing from my collection, a new bed, etc.). But there are things I need to do with some of it (get new shocks/struts and a tune-up for the car, put some extra money toward paying off my student loans, pay off a few smaller bills, set some aside for taxes) and then the rest needs to go toward promoting the release of the book. I took a financial planning class several years ago at church. I need to pull the books out and go through it again, because that was what helped me pay off all of my debts before I graduated . . . and then I got lazy and procrastinated and allowed myself to fall into old habit of allowing myself to ignore my bank balance and just purchase whatever I want whenever I want, which is a very destructive and stressful pattern and I’m tired of it. So that ends this year!

7. Spend my time wisely. I’ve set this goal over and over (and mentioned it several times on this blog before), but I’m a much happier, productive person when I live by a schedule. Since I’ve made the commitment to going to the gym (directly after work, which means I’ll still be home around six o’clock), I need to build the rest of my schedule, weighting it heavily toward writing time and limiting the amount of time I spend watching TV (which should be really easy to do with the writers’ strike now).

Update on other goals:
From my Reading Goals:
#2 under ABA Fiction: I started reading The Darkest Evening of the Year a couple of days ago. Should have it finished in about a week.

From my Writing Goals:
1. Send in four applications to teach at the ACFW conference: Showing vs. Telling, Critical Reading, Critiquing, and either POV or Setting. I completed this goal yesterday, submitting applications for Showing vs. Telling, Critical Reading, Critiquing, and Setting.

In what turned out to be the cleanest game LSU has played in years (considering we were the most penalized team in the SEC entering this contest), I’m barely able to sit down and write this . . .

My LSU Tigers are the NCAA Football National Champions!!!!!!!!!

Erica had this posted on her blog, so I’m playing along while still trying to recover from my annual upper respiratory infection . . .

1. Where is your cell phone? Purse 

2. Your significant other? Hypothetical

3. Your hair? Brunette

4. Your mother? Dedicated

5. Your father? Dutiful

6. Your favorite thing? Fiction

7. Your dream last night? Vivid

8. Your favorite drink? Soda

9. Your dream/goal? Inamorato

10. The room you’re in? Office

11. Your ex? None

12. Your fear? Companionless

13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Bestseller

14. Where were you last night? Home

15. What you’re not? Extrovert

16. Muffins? Cranberry

17. One of your wish list items? Stardust

18. Where you grew up? Newmexico (not fair—my state has two words!!!!)

19. The last thing you did? Google

20. What are you wearing? Scuzzies

21. Your TV? Off

22. Your pets? None

23. Your computer? On (duh)

24. Your life? Solitary

25. Your mood? Moderated

26. Missing someone? Mom

27. Your car? Green

28. Something you’re not wearing? Earrings

29. Favorite Store? Target

30. Your summer? Dreaded

31. Like someone? Friends

32. Your favorite color? Purple

33. When is the last time you laughed? Tonight

34. Last time you cried? December

35. Your favorite animal? Dogs

36. Last thing you ate? Mexican

37. Dream vacation spot? England

Wanna play along?

Do you need a cup of coffee?

Tiredness can affect your reaction times. See how alert you are with this game, then test the impact of a cup of tea or coffee on your performance.

My Results:

In addition to the actual physical activity of writing, here are my writing-career goals for this year:

1. Send in four applications to teach at the ACFW conference: Showing vs. Telling, Critical Reading, Critiquing, and either POV or Setting.

2. Turn in revisions on Happy Endings Inc. early.

3. Volunteer as a judge in the ACFW Genesis contest.

4. Complete A Major Event Inc. by June 30, 2008 to submit to Barbour by the first week of July.

5. Complete revisions on Ransome’s Honor; begin work on Ransome’s Crossing.

6. Develop and implement pre-release marketing plan for HEI.

7. Attend Alumni weekend at SHU—possibly co-teach a workshop.

8. Pitch the Ransome Trilogy to at least four editors at ACFW conference.

9. Sell the Ransome Trilogy.

10. Schedule at least one book signing event for January 2009 (yes, I realize that’s next year, but the work will have to be done this year).

If you’ve posted your 2008 goals on your blog, please be sure to leave a comment with a link!