Happy Dance Friday #53 SYTYCD season 8

Well. Were it not for computer power issues, I would have addressed the Shocking Developments in the results show for episode one. Surprising choices for the bottom three - Jess? Really? Do the voters have eyes? Deadlocked judges. Repeated solos. Still deadlocked judges. NO ELIMINATION for that week, but double elimination the next. Oh. The. Dramaz.

Oh the outrage as well, as we had to say goodbye to Iveta, for crying out loud. Sure, world ten dance champion, who needs that? :snarl: The mere thought of there being no ballroom dancer in the competition from this point on makes me grumbly. Farewell as well to tap dancer Nick, jazz dancer Missy and breaker Wadi. They will all be missed, but this is the nature of the business and in the end, as in Highlander, there can be only one.

This week proved yet again that we're in for a spectacular season. Do not show Sasha and Alexander's contemporary to a romance writer and not expect a story seed to start germinating:

The hands at the end, oh they kill me. Beautiful.

This week was also amazing with the guest dancers on results night.

Eric Luna and Georgia Ambarian:

And Axis dance company, which had me speechless:

Really not much I can say after that, because I am rendered mute by the sheer beauty of the guest performances, so I will hush. I love when a dance tells a complete story without any language at all, and that is definitely true in all three above clips.

Miranda and Robert, we will miss you both, but it was lovely to have you when we did.

Writing Advice from Louis de Pointe du Lac

"There's a simple answer to that. I don't believe I want to give simple answers," said the vampire. "I think I want to tell the real story." -- Anne Rice, Interview With The Vampire

This is not my book vs movie post for Interview With The Vampire (that's later) but the above quote is going in my inspiration notebook. I knew I would love this book right there, because those words, spoken by Louis, the book's narrator, neatly sum up my attitude toward writing. Louis begins as he means to go on, telling the real story of his life, death and undeath as opposed to the one the boy who interviews him might wish to hear.

We follow Louis from his human origins, along the complicated path he walks for nearly two centuries, until he informs the boy in matter of fact fashion, "And that's the end of it. There's nothing else. " The boy doesn't like this, but Louis returns " I tell you, and I have told you, that it could not have ended any other way."

I think Louis was on to something there. While Louis is fictional, Anne Rice still managed to make him real, and I say that qualifies him to give advice. What makes Louis real for me is the amount of detail we get about his life, seeing through his eyes, not only what is around him, but what Louis as an individual notices. Another character going through exactly the same events would notice different things, and we would have a different story.

Author Barbara Samuel O'Neal has this to say on the importance of detail, or as she phrases it, "layering in lusciousness." http://awriterafoot.typepad.com/a_writer_afoot/2007/10/layering-in-lus.html

Louis would have approved. While his story is one I want to let sit in my mind and ruminate for a while, I can tell Louis himself is going to stick around in my head (and my inspiration notebook) for quite some time. Even though the bulk of Louis' story deals with the particular concerns of his life as a vampire, he's intimately human throughout. If he'd like to come give lessons to the characters in my imagination's waiting room, he's welcome...but I'll make sure he's eaten first. One never can be too careful.

Some Days Are Like That

Issue with battery may be manageable if I replace the power cord, so will be looking to take care of that in the near future. Tomorrow is back to work on book stuff, and as one must mention at this time of year, not preparing to go to RWA Nationals, this year in NYC, my favorite city anywhere. Still good, though, as there will likely be other NYC conferences and I'll have plenty of time to prepare for those.

Happy Dance Friday and Saturday at the Movies posts will come either during the week or next weekend, but I will say the double SYTYCD eliminations had me making noises of disgruntlement. More on that later. Also planning a book vs movie review of Interview With The Vampire. Here's a hint; neither Brad Pitt nor Tom Cruise rank among my favorite actors and if someone who hasn't read the book can tell where big chunks of things were skipped over and/or changed, that doesn't give any points to the adaptation. Still thought provoking, though.

New-ish venture in the works. I'm reviving the Lion and Thistle Yahoo group for discussion of all things historical romance, for readers and writers alike. Interesting conversations are in the works, so jump on in.

Taking the day for that all-important creative well filling and looking forward to the work week to come.

I have the power...kinda

Happy Dance Friday and Saturday at the Movies posts still forthcoming. Having battery issues, but hope to have them sorted soon.

Rockstar

I always wanted to be a rock star. Still do.

Never mind the fact that my musical skills are extremely limited. In high school, I got kicked out of chorus for having a bad voice. By the teacher. In front of the class. This did not phase me as much as I thought it would, and since it was too late to drop the course, the teacher gave me an A as long as I showed up and did not sing. He called the time ‘study hall.’ I used it to read historical romance novels.

I took piano for several years as a kid, and as a result, I used to be able to play 99% of the theme from MASH from memory. The missing one percent being the ending, which meant I would keep going until whatever adult was present lost their last nerve. I tried again as an adult, trading private lessons from a musician friend for dogsitting when she and her hubby had gigs out of town. I mastered scales. We will not mention the guitar incident.

None of this deterred me. I’m an extrovert. Put me in a bunch of people and I can run off the energy for days. Put me in front of a bunch of people and let me do my stuff and I can run off the energy for weeks. If I’m doing it right, it’s an even exchange and they take away something good as well. All of which means a career in the arts is probably a good thing.

While my high school musical aspirations came to naught (oh Glee, where were you in the 80s?)I did love theater, and if I had to do college again, I’d have majored in that instead of education. Still, the Tardis is broken, so I can only go forward. Theater and a middle school English teacher who consistently picked my assignments to read to the class pointed me towards the areas where I could excel.

Theater not only gave me the chance to experience the pure magic chemistry of a really good cast and the ability to jump into a character and walk about in somebody else’s skin for a couple of hours in front of people who paid to see it, but two moments unique to performance.

Nothing can compare to that moment in the wings right before taking the stage, the only thing between backstage and the audience being the curtain that is going to go up any second now. No more chances to get it right; this is do or die. It also leads to the other one, that skip of a heartbeat when the performer does take the stage, eyes adjusting to the footlights, and best of all, can see the audience. All those faces, focused on the stage. It’s perfect.

If I could distill the rock star ambition into one snapshot, it would be the opening frames of James Blunt’s “I’m Your Man” video, (coincidentally a song I’m playing a lot while revising a certain scene from my hero's POV.) Walking/running down the corridor on the way to the stage, right before the show is slated to begin, said corridor lined with well-wishers who all have a hand in what everybody's about to see...no energy drink can give that kind of rush.

So far, I have been less than successful in convincing my family members to reenact this on my way to the keyboard each morning, so I'll rely on knowing my cheering section is there in spirit. Then again, knowing my notoriously bad depth perception, any euphoric rush into the footlights would likely result in something perilously close to the true story behind Ben Folds' "Hiroshima" (aka "Benny Hit His Head.)

The attitude, though, that I can have. Nobody can tell my stories but me, and if I give each story my all and do it the way only I can do it, that's rockstar writing in my book. Pun intended. As long as I have the vision and the confidence and know that even if I do end up charging off the stage and doing a faceplant -and those days will come- I can get back up and with the right attitude, make that into something good.

For me, being a rockstar is about knowing my voice and finding the right platform to connect with the audience - since I'm a writer, that would be the readers. It's about dedication to doing the best job possible, to introduce the people who live in my head to the world at large in a way that connects and lets the readers into the story world. Knowing that a reader caught the writer's vision, visited the story world and met the people who live there, that's a rockstar moment for sure. Holding up homemade glittery signs for a favorite author isn't mandatory, but it couldn't hurt, either.