Fun Friday: Coming Attractions
Happy Friday, everyone!
In keeping with the goal-setting theme I’ve been trying to get going this week, my goal for next week is to (1) blog every day and (2) get my 2009 goals posted. So stay tuned for that.
One of the 2008 goal lists I never did update was the movies to see list. So for 2009, I’ll include the movies from last year that I still want to see, and have added to my Netflix queue, followed by the list of movies slated to release in 2009 that I want to see.
2008 Movies in My Netflix Queue
Leatherheads
Iron Man
City of Ember
Twilight
Marley & Me
Bedtime Stories
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Tale of Despereaux
2009 Movies to See
Defiance — Based on the true story of three brothers (Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell), instead of glorifying the Nazis, the way the recent Tom Cruise vehicle Valkyrie does, this movie shows the courage and determination of the Jews who chose to fight back, who chose to defy those seeking to annihilate them. January 16, 2009.
Inkheart — The release of this film was pushed back to January from last summer. I wonder if it’s because of the writers’ strike last year, because of the other few Brendan Fraser movies that were released last summer/fall, or if they fell behind on the production schedule. January 23, 2009.
The International — Even though I think Daniel Craig is a great James Bond, this film is the vehicle that shows why Clive Owen could have done just as well in the role. Interpol Agent Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) and Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) pool their resources in an attempt to break up an international arms dealing ring financed by a high-profile bank. February 13, 2009
Race to Witch Mountain — I may be showing my age here, but I loved the Witch Mountain films of the late 1970s, in fact, I think my first crush ever was on Ike Eisenmann, who played Tony in the original films (as well as starring in several after-school specials around that time). And he has a cameo appearance as the Sheriff in the new film, as does Kim Richards, the original Tia, as a waitress. Oh, and did I mention that it has Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Ciaran Hinds in it? March 13, 2009.
The Accidental Husband — This was on my 2008 to-see list, but the release was pushed back from May to August and now to March. Not sure exactly what that says about how good of a movie it’ll be. Looks like a pretty straight-forward rom-com plot, but if it’s well done, this should be a very fun movie. Especially if Colin Firth gets thwarted! 🙂 I may wait for it to come out on DVD, just depends on what’s going on when it comes out. March 27, 2009.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine — Woohoo! After a not-so-great ending to the X-Men trilogy, we’re getting exactly what we want in this film: more of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine! And Liev Schreiber is in it (love him!) as Sabretooth, the bad guy, as well as Dominic Monaghan (LOST/Lord of the Rings) as “Beak.” May 1, 2009
Star Trek — It seems like I’m filling this list with movies that were on my 2008 list that got pushed back to 2009 release dates. Maybe that’s why the second half of the year last year seemed so devoid of good movies! This is J.J. Abrams’s take on the Star Trek universe. All I have to say for those of you who don’t recognize his name is that he’s the executive producer behind LOST, Alias, Six Degrees, Felicity, and Cloverfield. Oh, and Karl Urban is in this movie (as Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy)! May 8, 2009.
My Life in Ruins — After squeezing anything that was possibly remaining of the success of her film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Nia Vardalos is back in what looks like a wonderful romantic comedy. May 8, 2009.
Land of the Lost — Now, don’t get me wrong, I still don’t like Will Farrell. But Anna Friel is in this movie, and I do like her. But more importantly, I’m interested in seeing their take on this staple of my childhood Saturday mornings. June 5, 2009.
Public Enemies — I don’t usually go in for the gangster films, but the buzz around this one makes it sound like it’ll be great. Plus with Christian Bale as an FBI Agent and Johnny Depp playing John Dillinger, it’s bound to be full of superb acting. July 1, 2009.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince — This film was supposed to be out around Thanksgiving, but apparently Warner Bros. decided Harry Potter couldn’t take on James Bond, and that they could make more money with a summer release. July 17, 2009.
Julie & Julia — Based on the bestselling blog-turned-book Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, this film stars Amy Adams as the eponymous Julie, who tries to liven up her dreary life by cooking all of the recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. August 7, 2009.
G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra — I know, you’re all now thinking, “Huh?” But really, this looks like a pretty decent action film. And it is one of my favorite types of movies. August 7, 2009.
Dorian Gray — Based on the classic novel by Oscar Wilde and starring Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian). A September release date has been announced for the U.K., so hopefully it’ll open here around the same time. Autumn 2009.
Sherlock Holmes — Robert Downey Jr. as the master sleuth? Well, that wouldn’t really be the reason why I want to see it. But it does look interesting. November 20, 2009.
2009 Movies to (possibly) Watch on DVD
Mall Cop
New in Town
Watchmen
Monsters vs. Aliens
The Soloist
Angels and Demons
Up
My Sister’s Keeper
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Surrogates
I’m sure tons more will pop up as the year goes on, but those are the ones that seem of interest to me now.
Goal Setting: Accountability
Lori mentioned this yesterday, but I wanted to be sure to give this topic its due.
I mentioned writing down and regularly reviewing your goals, checking off the steps you’ve completed. This gives you self-accountability. For some people who are extremely self-motivated, this is all you’ll need. But for the other 98% of us, we need to take it one step further into public accountability.
You can choose to do this either through posting all your goals on your blog or MySpace or Facebook page and asking whoever is interested to help keep your feet to the fire.
However, there may be some goals that you don’t want to share with just anyone who might happen to stumble across your page. There are some goals that are going to be of such a sensitive nature that you’ll want to choose very carefully with whom you share them. So there are several things to keep in mind when choosing what level of accountability you need for your goals.
1. Is this something you know you can achieve on your own, with no one there to prod you on?
2. If your goal is of a sensitive/private nature, you might want to find an accountability partner with whom you meet/communicate regularly, someone who’s been through the same situation, someone who can encourage you in ways that no one else can.
3. Do you want encouragement and support from anyone who’ll provide it? Then you can go ahead and post your goals publicly.
4. Do you want people to hold you specifically to your goals—sticking to your timeline, urging you to re-evaluate when necessary?
It’s up to you to let your accountability partner or group know just what level of accountability you’re looking for. And these can be taken in steps. You can try self-motivating. If that doesn’t work, you can share it with one other person. If that doesn’t work, share your goals publicly and ask for support. And finally, if that doesn’t work, ask an accountability group to hold you specifically to your timelines/goals.
But just making your goals known does not accountability make. Follow-up is an important component of accountability. YOU need to review your goals and accomplishments regularly—with the accountability partner or in that public venue—and if you’re not making progress on them, if you’ve fallen behind on your timetable, ASK FOR HELP.
External influences work to knock us off track, to get us sidetracked or distracted. So we need to bring in other external influences to help keep us focused on working toward and achieving our goals.
Once you set your goals and write them down for yourself, go back through them and see what level of accountability you need on each one and go ahead and get that support system in place.
Goal Setting: New Year, New Goals
Depending on where you look, you’ll most likely read that 95–97% of people set goals or make resolutions at the beginning of the year. But at the end of the year, only about 3–5% report attaining their goals. If you’re like I used to be, you probably won’t even remember in December what your goals for the year were.
Would you take a trip somewhere you’ve never been without planning it in detail? I read a quote somewhere that said that most people plan their vacations with better care and more attention than they do their lives. And how many of us get to the beginning of a new year without looking back on the previous twelve months only to realize how much we could have accomplished if only we’d planned better—whether in our careers, in spending more time with family, or in finally making a long-held dream come true.
Ah, there’s that other word: dream. What’s the difference between a dream and a goal? Well, my opinion is that a dream is something for which you can only imagine the desired final result; a goal is something with defined steps you can take to reach the desired final result.
So, whether or not you’ve already started thinking about your goals/resolutions for 2009, here’s the main question you must ask yourself:
Does my goal have definitive steps which I can take to achieve the desired final result?
If you can’t break it down into steps—actions—you probably will never achieve it. Dream big. Then set short-term and long-term goals that will help you make those dreams come true.
Ever since posting updates on some of my 2008 goals a couple of weeks ago, I’ve had several people contact me and ask how one goes about setting goals that they don’t just give up on in March or April (or February). So here are a few tips for setting goals this year.
1. Write your goals down. Post them on your blog, save them in a Word document, or write them in the journal you write in daily. Write them down in a place you’re going to be accessing regularly, somewhere you’re not going to lose them.
2. Be specific. Don’t just write, “Get Published” or “Lose Weight” (those are dreams), write down the steps that will get you to the goal. For example:
Goal: Work on Getting Published
Steps:
- Finish manuscript.
- Get manuscript critiqued (preferably by crit partners, or by entering contests)
- Revise manuscript.
- Write synopsis and proposal.
- Research publishers to target the ones that publish what you write.
- Write query letter and get those submissions out.
3. Set a timeline. How do you eat an elephant? The same way you reach a goal: one bite at a time. Just writing down the steps isn’t enough—you have to give yourself a specific timeline for acting on each of those steps, or, just like always, you’ll put it off. Assign a date to each of the steps on each goal, write those deadlines on your calendar (or set up reminders in Outlook or whatever calendar program you have on your computer or PDA), and don’t let yourself down by procrastinating or pushing those dates back indefinitely.
4. Review and update your goals regularly. Depending on the timelines of your goals (if it’s something that’s going to take a year or longer, or if it’s something that will only take six or seven weeks), the only way to achieve your goals is to revisit them on a somewhat regular basis and update your progress. I wasn’t good at doing this regularly in 2008, thus the reason why I didn’t reach several goals, such as the books I planned to read or some of my personal goals.
5. Prioritize. Yes, there are many things in life that may take precedence over the goals you set at the beginning of the year. But don’t let the day-to-day rat-race of life become so overwhelming that you set your goals aside for it. Set your goals, and then make the attaining of them a priority in your life.
6. Keep it under control. I’ve touched on this already, but the goals you set need to be realistic and outcomes over which you have as much control as possible. If you set goals over which you don’t have control (i.e., “get published this year”), you’re setting yourself up for failure. This is called setting performance goals not outcome goals. You can only set goals based on what’s in your power to do. “Get published this year” is a dream in that the final outcome is out of your hands—and in the hands of the pub boards wherever you’ve submitted.
7. Be prepared for obstacles. The hardest thing about achieving a goal, no matter how well we think we’ve prepared for it, is when unexpected obstacles come up and interfere with our timelines or even throw everything we’ve accomplished already completely off track.
8. Be positive. State your goals in the positive, not in the negative. Don’t focus on what you don’t want to do any more, or don’t want to happen (i.e., “I don’t want to overeat anymore”) and state it as something positive (i.e., “I want to develop healthy eating habits”).
9. Be willing to revise your goals. I was asked in an interview a long time ago to name a goal I’d set and achieved (that was easy—going back to school and completing my education). The interviewer then asked me to name a goal I’d set that I hadn’t achieved. I couldn’t think of one (other than “lose weight,” and I wasn’t going there in an interview). As I thought about all the goals I’d set for myself over the few years before that, I realized that when it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to achieve a goal, I reviewed it and then revised it if it looked like something I couldn’t logically or realistically attain. That’s not free rein to give up on your goals if they’re challenging you, but you do have to be honest with yourself and revise them if necessary.
10. Be realistic, but aim high. Shoot for the moon. If you don’t reach it, you’ll at least reach the stars. If you set your goals high, if you challenge yourself to improve, to work hard, to learn all you can in the effort, everything you do will make you a better person.
Fun Friday–Happy New Year!
I’m back—finally!!! I couldn’t let the beginning of 2009 go by without any notice, so today, I’m offering a little advice from none other than American Statesman Benjamin Franklin that is as true now as when he wrote it more than two hundred years ago.
Next week, I’ll be blogging about goal setting—trying to explain how I go about setting my short- and long-term goals, since so many have asked for advice on that—as well as posting my 2009 goals lists. But for now, I hope you’ll find Mr. Franklin’s words, from his autobiography, as thought provoking and inspiring as I have as I think about what I want to accomplish in 2009.
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In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met with in my reading, I found the catalogue more or less numerous, as different writers included more or fewer ideas under the same name. Temperance, for example, was by some confined to eating and drinking, while by others it was extended to mean the moderating every other pleasure, appetite, inclination, or passion, bodily or mental, even to our avarice and ambition. I propos’d to myself, for the sake of clearness, to use rather more names, with fewer ideas annex’d to each, than a few names with more ideas; and I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurr’d to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept, which fully express’d the extent I gave to its meaning.
The names of virtues, with their precepts, were:
1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. Industry. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
11. Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
[Copied from Benjamin Franklin, His Autobiography as printed in the Harvard Classics, First Edition, copyright 1909 by P.F. Collier & Son, pp 78-80.]
Featured Author on Lena Dooley’s Blog
Author, and friend, Lena Nelson Dooley interviewed me for her Christian Writer’s World blog:
http://lenanelsondooley.blogspot.com/2008/12/author-kaye-dacus-stand-in-groom-free.html
Leave a comment on Lena’s blog to enter to win a signed copy of the book!
Merry Christmas
Write Place, Write Time will be on hiatus the week of Christmas. Hope you have wonderful holidays!
As my Christmas gift, here’s a little Christmas caroling to set the tone for the week!
Fun Friday–Holiday Writing Contest Winner!
Sorry I’m so late in getting this posted . . . Here’s the winning entry of the Holiday Writing Contest—Jennifer Marie Hofmann’s entry which centers around a midnight candle-lighting service tradition. Enjoy!
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This is a scene from my current novel Kathryn’s Hero. Kathryn is a thirteen-year-old girl who has made it through eleven of the fifteen months of her brother’s deployment to Afghanistan. This is the family’s first Christmas where they’ve ever been apart.
While her brother’s deployed, Kathryn is working on a project called Operation Support—where she does things that support the troops from the homefront. One of her items is to light a candle each week and say a prayer for Michael and his men—hence the reference in the text to “candles forty-nine and fifty”
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I squeezed into the pew next to my cousin, Mary Ann. The church was packed. Between cookie-making and last-minute-present-wrapping, Christmas Eve had flown by. In a few minutes, it would be midnight. It was already Christmas morning in Afghanistan. I wondered if Michael had gotten to sleep in. He loved to sleep in Christmas morning. I swear part of the reason was just to annoy me. He’d test my patience, seeing just how long it took before I’d come and drag him out of bed. If he were here this Christmas, I’d let him sleep all day if he wanted.
I elbowed Mary Ann. “Hey. Do you know if Aunt Rebecca got me makeup?” Mary Ann had put a little blush and eye shadow on me right before we left. Mom had been too busy to notice until we entered the church. I figured Mom might not let me buy makeup, but if someone gave it to me as a gift that was whole different story.
“I’m not telling. Now, shush, mass is starting,” Mary Ann said, standing up with everyone else as the organist began to play. She was grinning though, so I knew someone had.
During the prayer offering, Father Thomas said a special prayer for the deployed soldiers, and I silently added my own for Michael. Mary Ann and I sang along to Hark the Herald Angels Sing, very loudly and very off-key with the congregation as the priest concluded the mass.
I waited for the church to empty out then made my way up front to a stand of candles in a little alcove. I lit two, numbers forty-nine and fifty since Michael had left. I hadn’t missed a single Sunday. Tonight, I lit the extra one for all the soldiers away from home. Everything about this year was different. I’d always lit candles for baby Jesus, for those less fortunate than me, and for those in need. This year, my candle prayer was much more personal. “God. I know you’re busy, but can you spend a little extra time watching over all the soldiers tonight? Especially Michael. Please? Thanks.”
Mom wrapped her arms around me from behind. “Don’t worry Kathryn. He’s working overtime for Michael.”
I leaned back in Mom’s arms and watched the flame flicker in the dim light of the church, as I blinked back tears. “Merry Christmas, Michael.”
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It’s Out!
Thanks to my dear friend Ruth, I learned earlier this week that Stand-In Groom was beginning to hit shelves in Lifeway retail stores. So today, I just had to go look for myself. Here’s what I found:
This was at the Lifeway on Broadway in downtown Nashville. Since I had some time on my hands, I drove down to Cool Springs, but even though the Lifeway there is supposed to have them in stock, they didn’t have them out on the shelves yet. I then went over to the B&N down there, but they didn’t have it out either. But I did get a latte to justify the trip. 🙂
Let me know if you’ve had any “sightings” of it!
Why Can’t I?
So I totally had this topic all thought-out and planned to post this morning . . . and then time got away from me and I never got around to it.
In a comment on the Friday post, Alexandra wrote:
- “On a totally different note…is it just me? I’ve been really cracking down on my writing…done so much revising on my manuscript…and have studied so much about writing style, show vs. tell, etc., that now I can’t read/listen to a book without picking apart the writing in my mind. It’s becoming more and more difficult to read books that a year ago I really liked.
‘Gasp. They really “told” that sentence.’
‘He really butchered that point of view!’
‘He used the bad “felt” word!!!’
On the same note, if you’re a big name author can you get away w/breaking the rules? A lot of big name CBA authors (whose names I won’t mention) publish several books a year and are breaking multiple rules all the time. It gets on my nerves a little. To steal a line from ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’
‘Why, oh why can’t I?’”
I began answering by responding thusly:
- “Yes, ‘big-name’ authors can get away with a lot more rule-breaking than those of us just starting out—for two main reasons:
1. They started writing/getting published before writing styles changed and editors really started looking for stronger, more active, tighter writing (more showing, less telling, etc.), and therefore the authors are grandfathered-in. Although, I do have to say that some of these types of authors who’ve basically refused to change with the times are seeing their book sales drop as readers become more aware of what’s good writing and what’s weak/lazy writing.
2. Their books sell based on their brand-name as best-selling authors. People who love John Grisham or Tom Clancy are going to buy their latest titles without even giving a thought to what the story is about or whether it’ll be well-written or not. These authors established themselves not through the strength of their craft, but by the strength of their storytelling. So it all goes back to what every editor panel at every writing conference says they’re looking for: a great story (and they’d really like it to be well written with strong attention paid to the craft).”
And as soon as I posted that comment, I realized there was a lot more that could be said on this topic, in addition to responding to the first part of the comment.
Once we become better informed as writers, once we start learning the craft, yes, reading for pleasure becomes much more difficult—because we’ve been training our brains to flag certain things as “bad” or “wrong” when we’re in a creative frame of mind. So that analytical part of us starts encroaching on the creative side when we’re reading and pops up with those notifications that the sentence we just read was written in the passive voice, or that we were told that a character felt something.
In my Reading Goals Revisited post, I mentioned how difficult sitting down and reading has been for me over the past several years. I blame it on graduate school. Each semester, we were required to read four or five novels in our chosen genre and break them down critically—what worked, what didn’t, what we liked, what we would have changed, etc. (Just check out the Critical Reading series on the Writing Series Index page to see just how in-depth critical reading can get!)
I find it easier to lose myself in novels written outside my genre or not CBA-published because I’m able to turn that internal analyst off more easily when I can answer each little critique with the argument that the genre standards are different or the publishing houses in the ABA may not be looking for the same craft-style as CBA houses. With classic literature, or books published before about 1996 or so, the analyst never even wakes up—because it already knows the books aren’t going to be written to the same craft level.
Now, going back to the second part of the comment and the subject of this post—if the best-selling/big-name authors can break the rules, why can’t we?
Simple: because new/unpublished authors have a lot more to prove to an acquisitions editor than someone whose name on the cover of a book ensures at least 100,000 sold units the day the book hits the shelf. But not only that—as we learn these rules/guidelines of writing, it’s making us into better storytellers. If we’re aware that it’s more difficult to show and not tell, we’re challenging ourselves to figure out how to word something in a unique way instead of just taking the lazy/telling way out.
But if J.K. Rowling can become a breakout best-seller with wases and telling and embellished dialogue tags in almost every line of her books, then is it really that important for me to focus on the craft; or can’t I just focus on the story?
Here’s where the topic gets interesting.
There is such a thing as focusing too much on craft. I’ve mentioned before that one of the biggest complaints about creative writing programs and writers’ conferences is that it tends to homogenize writers’ voices—in other words, we all start believing that we should never use the words was and felt ever again in our writing, that we should come up with the most dynamic and unique and active verbs we can, that characters should jam their hands in their pockets instead of put them there, or that there can never be any description of the setting that isn’t vitally important to the action going on in the scene.
However, by eliminating passive voice (was) and telling (felt) where we can, we’re strengthening our writing and thus strengthening our stories. By finding dynamic and unique verbs, we’re extending our vocabularies and adding the depth of connotation to the words on the page. By eliminating the unnecessary parts of our writing—or by learning how to incorporate it in such a way that it’s an organic part of the story—we’re keeping our readers reading by keeping the story moving along at a good pace.
Good storytelling trumps good writing craft every time. I’ve read plenty of novels (both as an editor and as a reader) in which I’m totally frustrated by the craft-level of the writing—but I know exactly why it was acquired: because it’s a great story. But how much more fulfilling is it to read a book that has a great story and is well crafted?
Once you learn the rules of good writing, you’ll be able to figure out which ones are right for the way you want to tell your stories and which ones you can ignore. And you know what you’ve discovered at that point in time? Your VOICE as a writer. What is a writer’s voice? It’s the unique and distinctive way that YOU string together words and put them down on the page.
I got one of the best compliments of my writing from one of my local-group members Saturday. She’d just picked up a copy of the first chapter of Stand-In Groom, which I was giving away at the book signing event, read the first line, and said, “That first line is so you.”
So learn the rules. Then figure out how to use them to write like YOU. Then people will be reading your books and asking, “Why can’t I write something that good?”
KayeDacus.com 