Musing

There Are People Watching the Last Harry Potter Movie Right Now.

/ Lisa Asanuma / 6 Comments

I, sadly, am not one of them. It’s still two hours to midnight where I am right now, and I don’t have tickets to go, anyhow. Hopefully I’ll see it sometime this week—funds are extremely tight right now and you have to pick your battles.

Also…  I have to admit that I’m not so keen on the idea that this brilliant phenomenon is over. Oh I know, there’s pottermore coming, but the essentials—the books and the movies—they’re done for good now.

I was an extremely reluctant Potter fan. In fact, when the books were getting really popular and the first movie came out I turned my nose up at it all over the place. So much hype could never truly deliver. My sister had read the first three books, and my brother was starting to read them, and I was busy freaking out about starting high school—which had them teasing about me being so much like Hermione behind my back. I rolled my eyes at it then, but looking back, I’m going to choose to take it as a compliment. I think Hermione is pretty dang awesome.

Anyhow, I went along to see the movie—see what the fuss was about. Harry was your basic orphan-turned-something-awesome-in-some-other-world kid, and a bit of a brat, truth be told. I have to confess that I didn’t like him at all in the movie. What I did like, however, was the banter between Ron and Hermione. I have to admit that when I started the books, it was entirely to see how and when Ron and Hermione* were going to get together. For the most part I still didn’t like Harry very much… but that would change.

*(On the way home from the movie I asked my sister, “So, in the end it’ll be Ron and Hermione, and Harry and… Jenny? Was that her name?” I totally called it.)

Each book at first was breath-held anticipation as to whether Ron and Hermione would finally kiss, and then every movie was hoping-beyond-hope that they would portray things faithfully.

I really only started liking Harry a lot during the sixth book. Before that he was always so angry. In the seventh book, I fell in love with him. He’d grown so much, come so far, and was so profoundly grateful for the ones that had helped him get there… and that was what I loved most about him. That he was so thankful for his friends and for the people who’d sacrificed for him, and I was so touched by it all that I wanted to cry.

And because I saw the movie first, I’ve loved the movies just as much as the books. Watching Dan, Emma and Rupert grow up has been a lovely experience… and well, I adore Rupert, always have. Ahem…

But now the last movie is coming out, and it’s all going to end. It’s a good thing… but sad, too. I’m glad that I have a little extra waiting time to see how the last Potter flick turns out.

 

*********

P.S. I’m participating in the Independence Day blogfest tomorrow, details are here, come check it out!

A Few Randomosities About Me

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First things first – Go over right now and read my new Friday read over at Tales From the Hollow Tree. It’s called Procession, and it’s my favorite short that I’ve written so far.

Secondly – I’ve been watching Doctor Who with my husband… we’ve just started on Series Three. He misses Rose and sort of hates me for making him watch this show… and he’s not fond of Martha Jones yet (I don’t care for her much either, though I love Freema Agyeman).

Thirdly – We also just finished Veronica Mars. He sort of hates me for that one too… says it’s the worst ending he’s ever seen. I liked it better after being away from it for so long… though it did still leave me wanting more.

Fourthly – I’ve just listened to the audio books for both The Secret Garden and A Little Princess on Librivox.org (which I just love). I was so, so impressed with how much I still loved these books, especially the latter. Sara Crewe is one of my favorite characters, ever.

And lastly! I’ve been awarded the Stylish Blogger Award and The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award by the fabulous Ali Cross.

I’m supposed to give seven random facts about me, and then pass this on to eight other bloggers… I’ll do my best.

SEVEN RANDOM THINGS ABOUT ME-

1) When I was a kid, it took me hours to eat a single orange. I’d eat it pulp by pulp. I had a lot of patience, apparently.

2) I learned how to sew when I was four years old, with a needle, DMC floss, and bubble wrap.

3) I collect middle names. (What’s yours?)

4) I am a really slow reader. Well, in comparison to my mom and my sister, at least. It takes me a week or so to finish a book, if I’m not too busy… but I’m usually too busy.

5) I’m considering going back to school to get a library degree, as soon as I finish my book and start querying agents.

6) This is getting closer and closer, as I’ve passed 50K  recently!

7) I have a new idea for a Middle Grade book. So, so, wonderfully new. Never been excited about writing middle grade before, but this idea is too fabulous to ignore!

Now, as to blogs to tag:

– Isabelle Santiago              – Inari Grey                     – Shiny Shiny

– Tristi Pinkston                   – Elizabeth Meuller        – Jordan McCollum

– Shari Bird

2K a day?

/ Lisa Asanuma / 3 Comments

Let me start out by saying I’ve never finished NaNoWriMo. I’ve attempted it a good four or five times, too. I’ve never successfully gone a whole week making the daily word count—which in case you’re wondering, is 1667 words per day.

Recently, though, I’ve decided that my biggest goal for writing right now is to get through a first draft, remembering that it’s the second and third drafts that’ll make things pretty and nice. I mentioned this to my husband and said that the thing I had to do was set a word goal per day and stick to it. He asked me how many words I would write per day.

“Um… I don’t know.”

This was not the right answer to give him.

“I was thinking probably a thousand.”

He then challenged me to write two thousand words per day. I tried to explain to him that this would be impossible, and possibly make me cry.

But he asked me to try it… just try it.  I was unsure to say the least, but I agreed.

How is it going so far? Well I’m really only a couple of days into the challenge. Two thousand words, every Monday through Friday, at least until my first draft is done. I started last Wednesday. My first day it took me almost twelve hours, but I hit my goal. The next day I started a little earlier, but it still took me just about all day. Still, I had a very good idea of where my story was going—including a checklist of scenes I needed to write.

Friday I went on a quilt run with my mom. (Well, we dragged the husband along—you know, for extra goodies). A whole day of writing was gone. Saturday was part of the quilt run too. (If you don’t know what a quilt run is, google it. Then imagine it full of crazy old ladies.)

So… now I was 2000 words behind. I was worried this would throw off my momentum, and it’d be a challenge to get started again on Monday—today. Well, it was a challenge to get started today, but not really because I couldn’t find momentum—I just couldn’t find a chance to sit down at first.

I’m happy to say that when I did get to the sitting down, with some persistence I got even more written in a shorter time than I had the other two days—I wrote 3024 words today, and broke 48K in my WIP. This isn’t the most I’ve written of an original piece of fiction, but it is by far the most consecutive writing of an original piece I’ve done. I have one at 56K, but it’s all scattered in scenes, with big gaping holes in between. With the WIP I’m working on now, 95% of it was written consecutively.

Basically, I’m feeling good today. I even made up a good amount of the 2000 words I missed on Friday, so that I’m only a little over 600 words behind now, and now 600 words seems like a piece of cake. Even 2000 words doesn’t seem like a whole lot. After all, I can write 500 words in an hour, if I’m in the right zone. 2000 only takes four of those. That’s totally doable.

Well, right now, when I don’t have a job. I’m sure that has something to do with it. But at the same time, that’s exactly why I need to keep the fire burning.

So whatever your goal is, even if it scares you a little, believe in it. You’re capable. And if you need some support or a cheering section, hit me up. I’m good at that. 😉

This house is full of food.

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I’m not exaggerating.

I’m staying at a friend of my dad’s right now… kind of a long story…  This house is nice. Nicer than the house you’re imagining. Nicer than I know what to do with. This is the kind of house most people dream of. It’s in a gated community that’s similarly dream-worthy. The ironic part is that a lot of the houses in this community are empty 95% of the time, but bygones.

Right now it’s even nicer because we’re staying here alone, pretty much. This house sees a lot of guests all the time, though, so I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s full of food. Kitchen, pantry, fridge downstairs… etc. There is a lot of food everywhere. And I am doing a very bad job of being good and not eating it. My willpower is being tested here and failing utterly.

Utterly.

I’ve been stuck in the house a lot, which doesn’t help, and working on edits and formatting and tasks that involve a lot of sitting and inspire a lot of snacking. In a house FULL of snacks.

This is not a good thing.

I’ve been trying to spend time working it off with swimming and even a bout or two with racquetball (which I’m very bad at, but enjoy a lot—though I spend a lot of time with my arms up over my head) but I’m still worried I’ll be leaving this house with a few extra pounds… which is so far from what I need.

Got to get back on the wagon here… I’m foreseeing a drastic cut down on carbs in my future.

In other news… I’m in between editing projects right now, so hopefully I’ll get a new story up on Tales from the Hollow Tree by next week.

I’m working on Jethro, and I actually have a checklist detailing exactly what needs to happen to finish the story. There’ll be a lot of rewriting going on after that, I’m sure, but I’m looking forward to finally being done with a first draft of something. I’ve started to feel like a faker once in a while, when I look at how long I’ve been writing and how long I’ve been wanting to be published—but not been able to finish something. I’ve felt like one of those millions of people who say they want to write a book, but never do a thing about it.

The thing is, though, I’ve also always known that I wasn’t one of those people. Because I know this is the thing I’ve always wanted to do, and that eventually I’d be able to do it. Really it all comes down to that determination thing. Besides scrambling with day jobs (when they come) to try and keep money coming in, at the end of the day it’s the writing that keeps me going.

I think what’s really kicking me into gear right now is editing. Editing is fun and work that I really love, not to mention extremely gratifying when something you’ve worked on is released for publication. It’s still someone else’s book, though. And I want it to be my book. I just want my book to be ready when the time comes.

A through… ahem…

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So, the A-Z challenge didn’t work so well for me. I didn’t even quite make it halfway through the challenge, and then I stayed away from my blog to avoid my shame. We really do get silly about our blogs sometimes.

I’ve been up to my elbows in edits for Drollerie the past couple of weeks, and am likely to be there for some time. It’s pushed writing to the corner of my mind, but I’m trying to keep the story talking in my head. I’ve been working on the mythology behind Jethro a little bit, talking it over with Isabelle Santiago. She’s helped me to realize that I still had thrown-out ideas that would work, and that maybe I should re-incorporate them. Previously I had taken them out because they were a little too complicated, but talking them out, I found solutions for a few things I hadn’t thought of before.

In other news, I feel a bit sheepish that it’s taken me so long to do this, but I’ve been given a Creative Blog Award by Deirdre Coppel of A Storybook World.

Thanks Deirdre!

J is for Jethro

/ Lisa Asanuma / 1 Comment

Jethro, Arizona isn’t on any maps. That’s mainly because it’s plucked straight from my imagination. I was traveling all over the southwest a few summers ago, on business with my dad. Luckily this was made interesting on account of my father knowing the southwest like the back of his hand, and his willingness to travel off the beaten path.

I had a story in my head that, while not exactly just beginning to form (it had been a story before, you see, but it had been demolished and salvaged for scraps when it had gotten out of control and unpublishable), was definitely in the beginning stages in most cases. A lot of my time on this trip was spent writing poetry about desert lizards and musing on this story.

I was looking for a place. I knew it would be in the desert, but it had to be somewhere special, somewhere that was mine. And then I found a place that was almost perfect. We drove through Jerome, Arizona, a small mining town that’s all topsy-turvy and thriving on tourism alone, with intrepid architecture and dangers of mine shafts all round.

I knew that I had found something magically close to where I wanted the setting of my story to be. I regret that I haven’t woven more of its magic into the story yet, as I feel that will be something left up to the rewrites, but it’s all the glory of the modern world in an older western settlement, with the beauties of the hot Arizona desert, a desert I’ve grown to love in my years of traveling across it time and again in my youth. This is a story I love, so it’s fitting for it to have a setting that I love, too.

And I’ve just realized I now have two J entries… le sigh.

I is for Incognito

/ Lisa Asanuma / 6 Comments

So, posting about this isn’t very Incognito of me… but ah well.

I’m a member of a writing group. It is a writing group made up of LDS writers. Not necessarily writers who write LDS stuff, but writers who happen to be LDS. (Like me…)

I don’t talk a lot about my faith here, mainly because I have other places to talk about it, but also because—well, other than keeping my books pretty language-free and otherwise clean, so far I can’t say that my religion has affected my writing much. I consider myself pretty mainstream, and am aiming towards the mainstream market.

I went to my first writer’s conference last year, though, and it happened to be the LDS Storymaker’s Conference, because I was in the right place at the right time, and through that I joined Authors Incognito. Really, AI is a support group. A big network of writers, some published but many not, who are all on a Yahoo listserv.

I spent a lot of time on the edges of the group because there are so many emails that come through that they can be a little overwhelming, but eventually I dove in, and while I’m still not super active in the group (I’m a bad blog-reader, and mostly a lurker as yet) I’ve met some fantastic people in it, and what’s more, I always feel like I’m connected to writing, and I think that has actually helped me a lot, creatively.

It’s something that’s true about other things, too. If I socialize with crafting people, I craft more. If I socialize with writing people, I write more.

Really, it’s as simple as that. If you’re trying to write, connect with other writers. It’s a great way to start. Or to dig yourself out of a hole, or through a wall. The great thing is, there are lots of ways to find other writers out there online. Be careful who you share your writing with, but if you’re just trying to figure out the whole writing thing in the first place? Get talking to other writers. The creative energy will nip at you more than it ever has, I promise.

H is for Handmade Movement

/ Lisa Asanuma / 8 Comments

I’m a little late in the night, but I have to give a shout out to the Handmade Movement. As an Etsy seller, buying handmade is something that’s pretty important to me. Handmade crafts are something that I grew up with. My mother is a quilter, specializing in Hawaiian and Jacobean applique, and creativity has always been encouraged in my family.

There are really a lot of reasons to buy handmade, though. Firstly, buying directly from artists and artisans means that you know that your money is going to the people who put together the product that you’re getting, something that you can’t be sure of in almost any retail situation. Secondly,with websites like Etsy and Artfire, it’s easier than ever to do.

Maybe one of the biggest reason to buy handmade, though, is because in today’s mass-produced world, one-of-a-kind pieces of self-expression can only truly be found in the handmade market. Buying handmade is also a great way to support local artists instead of big chains, and a vote for quality—something that has been sacrificed in the mainstream markets in favor of price cuts.

The coolest thing about the handmade movement, though? Is that it also means that YOU can make things. Today learning how to knit, crochet, sew, make jewelry or whatever it is that interests you is easier than ever, because the internet literally has endless information on all of the above subjects (and lots more) available with just a Google search or two. Want to learn how to make soap? How about how to do embroidery? Or how to spin yarn? If you’re more of a visual learner, I’d suggest looking through Youtube. I personally learned how to spin, crochet, and bind books off of youtube.

Maybe selling online isn’t for you. Maybe selling at all isn’t for you. But there’s nothing like making something useful of your own.

This is also why I write, by the way. I have to be creating something all the time, whether it’s literally putting together a journal or notebook, making something wearable out of yarn, making the yarn itself, or telling a yarn of my own. 😉

F is for Firefly

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In case you are unfamiliar, Firefly was a short-lived TV show that had a movie called Serenity. It was about Captain Mal Reynolds, an ex-sergeant from a war against unifying worlds into one government—sort of like the few that didn’t join the Federation in Star Trek. His side lost, and so Mal became the captain of a little ship called Serenity, named after the valley he fought his last losing battle in. He and his crew—such that they are—take jobs as they come, despite their legal standing, and somehow things have a way of not going as planned.

It’s true, there are few shows, fandoms, or what have you that I love as much as I love Firefly. In fact, in some ways I could almost say that it beats out every other thing I’ve ever fanned over. This isn’t to say that I love it more, necessarily, but that there’s more to it. Firefly has science fiction, an epic, expansive universe, and diverse and fascinating characters. It has romance, humor, real stakes and lots of secrets—still, even though the show and movie are long over.

Now, I’m not your average Firefly fan, a devoted Whedonite (that’s a fanatic for creator Joss Whedon of Buffy and Angel, both of which are shows I’ve never seen). I have been interested in the show since the beginning, since I saw advertisements for it on Fox before it began. I was particularly interested because of Nathan Fillion, who plays Mal Reynolds—I’d been a fan of his since he was the charming fiancé on Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place. (I can also claim having fallen for Ryan Reynolds long before he was on the A List because of this show—do you remember the episode where he tracked Ashley all the way to England—where she wasn’t even, really—just to tell her he loves her, only to find out she has a boyfriend? That’s an overblown sidetrack, but oh man, a little piece of my heart has belonged to that man ever since.)

Ahem.

I never watched the show as it aired. Fox famously played around with the Firefly schedule, changing the time nearly every week and not even showing the episodes in the order they were supposed to play—no wonder it got canceled after only half a season, right?

I didn’t watch the show until just a couple of years ago. And really, I did it for one of the silliest reasons ever. I watched all thirteen episodes and the full-length movie twice in a row (the second time with commentary) in a very short amount of time, all in order to write a compare/contrast between the Serenity crew and the legends of Robin Hood for my Robin Hood class. (Yes, I took an entire course on Robin Hood in college, and it was one of the coolest classes I took in college ever.) I even pitched the idea to my professor before I had seen the show, if you can believe that, just because I’d seen a website somewhere mention that the two stories had vague similarities.

In fact, there were a lot more than I could begin to remember off the top of my head now. Reference to their surroundings by color only (the Green, vs. the Black), refusal to trust someone unwilling to share their actual name, lots of characters that bore similar archtypes to famous merry men, etc.

What started as an idea for a school essay, though, became one of the great fandom loves of my life. If you haven’t dipped yourself into the world of Firefly just yet, I suggest you give it a try. It has a lot of heart, though the movie might break yours, a bit. Did I mention it’s only 13 episodes? Definitely worth the investment of time.

I got an A+ on that essay, by the way. And in that class in general.

Oh, and it’s my birthday. Wish me a happy one! 😉

 

E is for Eve

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No, not that Eve.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I will be the ripe old age of twenty-six. I’m still very much okay with admitting my age, though that might change in a year or two. Or three? I’m not sure.

My birthday has snuck up on me this year more than any other before. Then again, last year I got engaged on my birthday, so maybe it’s just quiet in comparison to that. I don’t know how to feel about this one, other than that it’s snuck up on me. I still feel like I’m somewhere in February, maybe. Where has a third of the year nearly gone by already? We don’t have a lot of money going around right now, so I’m hoping for a lovely meal cooked by my sweetheart. Today I went out to an early dinner with him and my dear grandma, who is a very dear lady to me, and that was enough of a something.

Really, though, I have a lot to celebrate. Despite tight money and my biggest wish being landing some kind of “regular” job, I have quite a lot to celebrate… I’m married to my best friend, and that’s something not everyone can claim, and I have my health, and a roof over my head, something that can’t be taken too much for granted in the world, such as it is at the moment. I have fantastic friends who are very dear to me, and a whole stack of books that I haven’t read yet, along with burning ideas for books of my own, and all of that I am very grateful for.

Ah well… I see I’ve passed midnight without getting my post up for the day, but then again I refuse to feel badly about it.

It’s my birthday, you know. 😉