Celebrate the Small Things 26-7-24

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things...

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

Well, kind of...  We've got the semi-finals for the opera singing competition we're running happening, so I'm working all weekend.  But it is just in the evening, so I may get a bit of writing time during the day.  But I'm not counting on it.

Had a couple more query rejections for Guide Us this week.  I seriously don't know what's wrong with this one.  I've never had such a dire response rate to a query.  And this query has had more professional eyes on it than any previous one.  It's incredibly frustrating.

And that's about it for me this week.  What are you celebrating?

Books I've read: We Are The Light

 

I picked this up on my last trip to the library because I've enjoyed other books by Matthew Quick and figured I'd probably like this one too.  And while I didn't love it, I did enjoy it and appreciate what it was trying to do.

Lucas Goodgame has survived an unspeakable tragedy that has taken his wife from him and torn his entire small town apart. He manages to hold himself together with his belief that his wife, Darcey, has stayed with him in her angelic form, visiting each night to hold him and guide him through his grief and the fact his analyst appears to have abandoned him.

Through a series of letters to his analyst, Lucas tells the story of his grief and eventual healing, something that is brought about when a young man, the brother of the person who instigated the violence that tore through the town, sets up camp in his yard.  A former counsellor at the high school, Lucas is drawn to help this damaged boy, and through helping him, somehow manages to heal the entire town.

Lucas is a fascinating POV character in that he wholly believes what he thinks is happening, even though his interactions with the townspeople show us that he is not seeing everything as clearly as he thinks he is.  And what a town it is!  All the citizens who rally around Lucas have their own quirks and eccentricities and they are really what makes this book so delightful.

The eventual revealing of the truth of what happened the night of the tragedy, and Lucas's own acceptance of the truth make for compelling reading. And of course, the fact that there is a movie theatre right there in the centre of the story, doesn't hurt.  At least from my perspective.

So I'd recommend this one.  It is heavy in places, and its depiction of grief and grieving is very real and raw, so if you're in a fragile place or on your own journey through grief, it may be tough read.  You've been warned...

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero—everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an eighteen-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas’s backyard that an unlikely alliance takes shape and the two embark on a journey to heal their neighbors and, most important, themselves.

From Matthew Quick, the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook, We Are the Light is an unforgettable novel about the quicksand of grief and the daily miracle of love. The humorous, soul-baring story of Lucas Goodgame offers an antidote to toxic masculinity and celebrates the healing power of art. In this tale that will stay with you long after the final page is turned, Quick reminds us that guardian angels are all around us—sometimes in the forms we least expect.

Weekly Goals 22-7-24

 I managed to get quite a bit of writing done over the weekend and I'm quite happy with the scenes I wrote.  I feel like I may have sorted a few things out in my head about who knows what and that has clarified the way forward for me. 

Means I need to go back and change some stuff further back, but I'll do that later.  I know editing is going to take a long time; it always does.  One of the negatives to writing without much in the way of an outline or plan...

So my goal for this week is to try and write at least one more chapter.  It may not happen - I'm working the next two weekends because our next event is happening over that period.  Plus, the Film Festival starts at the end of July.  I haven't bought a ton of tickets for the Film Festival this year, but I got a ten-trip ticket for Christmas that I've redeemed, so I'm going to at least ten.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 19-7-24

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things...

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

I had two days off and did a bunch of writing on A Stranger to Kindness. I'm at that awful point in drafting where nothing seems to be hitting the page the way I want it to and everything I write feels like it's in the wrong place or happening at the wrong time.  

I know it's all part of the process and that this draft is all about getting the story onto the page and I'll be able to fix it later, but it doesn't feel great.  If feels like I'm not getting it right, that I'm not hitting the beats.  I think I'm struggling a bit with trying to show Harley's inner conflict between what he's internalised, what he's been told and what he's seeing in his new home.

Hopefully I'll be able to get that layered in once I've finished writing the thing...  I'm getting to the meaty stuff now, but can't help thinking that I haven't given the core relationships enough time to develop before getting there.  I guess we'll see how it comes out in the end.  I've written about 35K words, so it's not like I've got a bloated word count.  I can probably write another 10K or so building up those relationships before I need to get to the major turning point, so maybe I'm not in such bad shape.

I hope to get a bunch more writing done over the weekend. The weather looks like it's going to be dreadful, so a good excuse to stay in!

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've read: The Heart's Invisible Furies

A friend at work gave me this to read because she thought I'd enjoy it.  She was right...

It's kind of an epic story in that it spans around 70 years in life of Cyril from his birth out of wedlock in 1940s Ireland to the present day.  In telling the story of this one man, we get to see the way attitudes and ideas have changed over the years. And the ways they have not.

Cyril realises quite young that he's gay, even if he isn't able to communicate what it is he feels when the glamourous young Julian shows up at his house and wants to compare willies.  Cyril's attraction to Julian forms the backbone of his identity, even while Julian seems oblivious to his desires.

With Julian unable (or unwilling) to return his affections, Cyril is forced to seek satisfaction in the only places available to him in the repressed Ireland of the 1950s and 1960s.  It's only after escaping Ireland for Amsterdam that Cyril is finally able to accept himself and the love of another man.

In 1980s New York, that acceptance is turning to fear with the AIDS epidemic ravaging the gay community, yet it isn't AIDS that shatters Cyril's life but a random act of violence.  Broken, he returns to Ireland to try and reconnect with his past and find a way forward.  And in doing so, he may just find the family he's never had before...

I really enjoyed this book.  Cyril was a fascinating character because he is terribly flawed, yet still very relatable.  It was also fascinating to follow the ways attitudes toward homosexuality changed over the period of time, particularly in Ireland with its deep rooted Catholicism.

The author's note at the end was also a fascinating read, so if you decide to read this book, don't skip that!

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb: 

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?

Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from – and over his three score years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more.

In this, Boyne's most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.

Weekly Goals 14-7-24

I got another chapter written over the weekend, so this week my goal is to add another one (if I don't take those days off) or another four or five if I do.  I feel like a lot of what's happening in this story is happening in the wrong order, but I'll deal with that in editing, once I've seen the shape of the whole book.  The good thing about writing in Scrivener is that it's easy to move scenes around.

I got a few more query rejections last week too, so I'm going to try and send out a few more queries this week too.  Some of the agents I wanted to query in my first round were closed, so hopefully they will have re-opened now.

And that's about it for goals.  What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 12-7-24

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things...

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

And I don't have a lot on this week, so I'm hoping to get time to write another chapter or two of Kindness.  I may also be able to have a couple of days off during the week too.  We were all gifted an extra two days' leave for working on Light Cycles and they have to be used in July.  This week makes sense to use them because the following week is when things ramp up for our next event.

I snuck out of work a little early on Thursday to go and see Kinds of Kindness, the new film by Yorgos Lanthimos.   It's almost three hours long, but doesn't;t really feel long because it's broken into three parts, each of which is kind of like its own film.  Just all three have the same actors in them, just playing different parts.  And all three stories are about power - having it, not having it, relinquishing it.  It's interesting and absurd and makes you feel a little off kilter.

I loved it.

What are you celebrating this week?