I had tears in my eyes

but I didn’t cry is my way of saying, mostly when talking about movies, but also books, that there was a sad bit, the ending was sad, but I didn’t care enough about the characters to cry. I care so much that I am touched by the sad events, but my whole being is not completely in it.

As an example: I had tears in my eyes after I watched Sanctum, but I didn’t cry. While, on the other hand, I was absolutely bawling my eyes out after watching Finding Neverland. (Do watch it if you haven’t!)

I had tears in my eyes after watching the last Harry Potter movie, but I didn’t cry. I flooded the book with tears while reading, and had to stop because I couldn’t see anything while crying. And on a side note: Has anyone noticed how beautiful eyes Lord Voldemort has in the movies. They look so sad, and filled with emotions… <.<

You can see his eyes better in the movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: part 2. Watch it.

(I’m somewhat obsessed with movies, if you haven’t noticed)

Movie: Sanctum

Finally finished watching Sanctum. I got bored when I watched it the first time and made a chocolate cake while watching (=not really much watching, more listening). So when I decided to sit down and watch it until the end I realized, when they were trapped and I could see who were going to tag along, I realized I knew who were going to survive and who were going to live. (I must say I was quite disappointed at the predictability of the movie). It is a James Cameron work, and … well… he has yet to make a movie whose ending surprises me. The ending was sad, and I had tears in my eyes, but I didn’t cry.

Avatar for example. The moment Jake Sully left his wheelchairbound body for that Na’vi body for the first time I knew he was somehow going to end up in the Na’vi body. Didn’t you?

I’m not saying that these movies are not worth watching, it’s just that… I love twisted endings. Take The Wicker Man for instance, with Nicholas Cage. I didn’t believe the end until I saw the after text roll. If you haven’t seen it, you absolutely must!

Mary Sue

I found this online in some obscure corner. I haven’t found it elsewhere, all other links to this site, and if it goes down, then is it saved anywhere? Well now it is: (Disclaimer: Don’t own it, don’t make any money from it, if Paula Smith wants me to take it away, I will (but I think it’s so good it has to be shared! 😉 ))

This is the story that coined the phrase “Mary Sue”. It appeared in 1974, in the zine “the Menagerie”.

A TREKKIE’S TALE

By Paula Smith

“Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky,” thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise. “Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet – only fifteen and a half years old.” Captain Kirk came up to her.
“Oh, Lieutenant, I love you madly. Will you come to bed with me?”
“Captain! I am not that kind of girl!”
“You’re right, and I respect you for it. Here, take over the ship for a minute while I go get some coffee for us.”
Mr. Spock came onto the bridge. “What are you doing in the command seat, Lieutenant?”
“The Captain told me to.”
“Flawlessly logical. I admire your mind.”

Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and Mr. Scott beamed down with Lt. Mary Sue to Rigel XXXVII. They were attacked by green androids and thrown into prison. In a moment of weakness Lt. Mary Sue revealed to Mr. Spock that she too was half Vulcan. Recovering quickly, she sprung the lock with her hairpin and they all got away back to the ship.

But back on board, Dr. McCoy and Lt. Mary Sue found out that the men who had beamed down were seriously stricken by the jumping cold robbies , Mary Sue less so. While the four officers languished in Sick Bay, Lt. Mary Sue ran the ship, and ran it so well she received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Vulcan Order of Gallantry and the Tralfamadorian Order of Good Guyhood.

However the disease finally got to her and she fell fatally ill. In the Sick Bay as she breathed her last, she was surrounded by Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Mr. Scott, all weeping unashamedly at the loss of her beautiful youth and youthful beauty, intelligence, capability and all around niceness. Even to this day her birthday is a national holiday of the Enterprise.

I have to take my hat off for Paula Smith. Because this explains pretty well what Mary Sue is. There are also several Mary Sue tests online you can use to see if your character is a Mary Sue. Mary Sue test 1, Mary Sue test 2. Enjoy. At least I did 😉

If you’re writing stories

where do you get your ideas from? It’s not that I have run out of ideas, I’m just curious.

My ideas can start with a simple line, or a simple thought, like What if? That’s how Then Came Mary started. I created a character called Mary Sue, and then I asked myself: What if Mary Sue wasn’t a Mary Sue? What if she just had the name and was quite the opposite to what a Mary Sue is? (If you’re into writing and don’t know who Mary Sue is, you have to read this: Mary Sue – Wikipedia) And so Mary Zuu was born (Zuu is her last name FYI)

I Called Him Gabriel has been floating around in my mind for quite some time now, but I think it all started with What if: What if the boy Iris believes to be an angel really isn’t an angel, but something worse? And then the title was born, because Iris called him Gabriel, after the archangel.

So, where does your ideas come from? Do you sit and force them to come, or do they jump down, like a cat on a mouse, on you and surprise you?

Query Shark

Often when I’m bored I go surfing on the net. It’s a quite interesting place, in case you haven’t noticed. Since I want to be a writer, a published writer that is (are those called authors?), sometime in the future I’ll have to make a query. Either to a book agent or a publisher (unless I go solo). I just wanted to share with the rest of the world a small puddle in this wide net, a puddle with sharks, that bite, hard. It’s a Query Shark! If you’re in the book business like me (yeah, one can always dream!) I recommend you take a look at that site, but be warned. There be sharks. 😉

Less than a week

is left to that fabulous month, otherwise called November, (Yep, another NaNoWriMo insane freak), and my nerves are almost crackling with anticipation. This year, will be my fifth year, but my third after I proved to myself I can write a complete story.

My first completed story was The Speed of Darkness.
My second complete story was Then Came Mary.

This year, to celebrate that it’s going to be my third completed story (why, yes, I take out victory in advance) and third time is a charm, I’m aiming to finish not one, but two stories. If I do that, then I have told myself that the path will be opened in front of me and I will find the true meaning of my life and the courage to walk down the path of my destiny (i.e. my dream of being a published and read author will come true) so I can’t fail. I have to write two stories in November, otherwise I’m doomed to work in the human treadmill for the rest of my life. And that is not encouraging. I have to succeed! Failure is not an option, I have to and I am quite certain I will succeed. I have even given myself permission as long as the first finished piece is I Called Him Gabriel then I can finish off an already started story (Getting Even) and it will still count as two.

So my nerves are literally crackling with anticipation of November 1st. I want to start now, but I cant. I know that if I do I will most probably feel so bad about it that I will fail on purpose. (I know I have weird thinking, and there is no sense of logic in it, but it works for me (since bribes do not work, I have to threaten myself with failure in life))

Passwords

They’re tricky. But I’ve come up with a system to remember them. I usually use 6 to 7 numbers followed by one or two letters that are easy for me to remember. For more important passwords (such as my e-mail password, my computer passwords etc.) consists of letters and numbers mixed in a pattern with occasional capital letters. For every new site I join I become more and more lazy and use the same password numbers and just change the letters or vice versa.

Then come wordpress. Somehow I had clicked in “remember me” so I just had to open wordpress, and I’d have access to my wp site. Then someone (I suspect my dear fiance) logged me out.

And I couldn’t remember the password. I knew it was some simple combination of all my previous passwords, but which combination?? I tried the numbers, I tried the letters, I even tried an old password I used while in college, to no avail. I couldn’t access my page.

Luckily they have that wonderful “Forgot you password?” button. After a little brainstorming I came up with a new password. Consisting of nearly 20 letters and numbers. So next time I get logged out and have to log in again, I’ll be fucked. (I can pretend the forgotten password is the reason I haven’t been blogging in a while, but truth be told it’s not the truth.)

Warning: Now follows a very long and potentially boring description of my days at work.

I have been working full-time this last week. Even though I’m only part-time employed. I have spent more hours at work than I actually want to, and it’s really getting on my nerves. So much that yesterday I promptly sat down on a trolley when we had no customers and watched the self checkouts from my new position.

I’m normally seen wagging back and forth when there’s no customers, so when my manager discovered me sitting down he became worried and wondered if I was okay. I told him I was ok, just tired of standing. In five minutes he had gotten someone to cover for me and sent me on a 20 minutes break. The security guard that usually keeps me company in the self checkout looked so surprised I almost laughed.

“That’s very nice of him! That’s uncommonly nice of him.” The security guard commented as we saw my manager hustle away to find someone to replace me. I don’t know if he’s trying to make up for being harsh to me. Because last Sunday I made a mistake (Well, the computer started the mistake, and I couldn’t do anything else but continue it) I explained it to my manager two times. He even has a bunch of papers explaining what happened and why the papers are showing a lot of money missing, even tough there is no real money missing at all. And on this day, when I had just started and was talking to my colleague about my holidays, he jumped on me and asked if I had sorted out the missing money yet.

I stared at him and said there’s no money missing, but I will doublecheck the till in question next Sunday. His reply was that he wanted it done now! today! tonight! as soon as possible! I looked at my colleague and she just shrugged and rolled her eyes. Thing is I overslept the day I was supposed to check the till. I could have done it in the half hour I had on me before the store opened, but someone had forgotten to take the operator tills out. Which meant that I had to take them out, and didn’t have time to check the till at all. Later the same day I waited 40 minutes for the dutymanager. I called him thrice. The third time he didn’t pick up so I called my manager who went to find him. And even later that day my manager asks me if I have done “the thing I asked you to do.” and I said no, but I’ll do it just as soon as I’m done with this, and then he comments that I’m awfully late today. Well, let’s see, first I come to work half an hour later than I’m supposed to. It took me 15 minutes to locate the dutymanager and the key to let me into cash office (yep, I work in a small cell with no windows and stinky aircon. Life sucks.) Then I discover the tills are not out, and have to take them out. By the time I’m done to even consider checking the till, the store is about to open, so I can’t. Next I wait 40 minutes for duty manager. That totals to almost one hour thirty minutes. Add to that the half hour lunch I usually don’t take (because I want to get home early) we’re talking about two hours. So yes, I was running awfully late that day.

Anyways. I’m looking for new jobs and have decided to start a business of my own. I can’t stand working under people who don’t really know what they’re doing. I love books, everything about them. And I’m working in an area that is as far from books as you possibly can come (building industry – yay! -.- ) It’s an interesting industry, I admit, but I want to be the one painting the walls, not the one selling the paint! Or I want to sell books. So, that’s what my business is going to be about. Selling books. Preferably my own (did I mention I’m an author?)

Now I’m going to go through all the tabs I have opened (heaven bless the people who created the tab-browser – more on that topic later) and then I’m going to finish watching Sanctum (I suffer from claustrophobia, (yeah, I work in a claustrophobic environment, but I have two phones and a security camera, and I complained about the door that sometimes goes in lock with the loose handle (good setup for a scary movie) so they fixed it, and I like to torment myself with scary movies, especially before bed, just to see if I can get nightmares – more on that topic also later 🙂 )
–> movie.

Time flies

like a banana, fruit like an arrow. Or how is it?

I’ve been off today. No work, no nothing. Got up at eight and since then I haven’t done anything worthwhile. Well, I’ve drawn. Miss Georgiana Darcy from the 2005 movie. I love her smile as she meets miss Elizabeth for the first time, and her brother is almost babbling, the gaze she gives him says so much. So I wanted to draw her. I drew her and a mermaid and a Kirin and now I’m sitting here wondering where the time went. It was 12 just seconds ago. But! I’ve had time to watch the last Harry Potter movie. I had tears in my eyes, but I didn’t cry. Compared to when I read the book, I almost bawled my eyes out! Anyways, I’m still of the opinion books are much better than movies. (there may be some exceptions though)

13 days left until November and I’m feeling quite positive about it. I found a nice site about writing tips and have been reading and reading … take a look at Alexandra Sokoloffs tips. Pure love, I tell you!

Now, where is that coffee pot? For I feel like having a caffeinated burst of energy. I desperately want to write, but am feeling a bit sluggish from being inside the whole day. This can’t be good.

Sunday again

Maybe I should just keep going on every second day. That seems to be the pace I’m setting here. Today at work was boring. I’ve been doing the same stuff for over half a year now, and it’s getting old. I labeled some boxes in the office, because I didn’t have anything else to do. I talked to one of the managers, really nice fellow, why I moved to London, why he moved to London and why we both wanted to go home again, for approximately one hour. I finished some paperwork and then hung around the checkout, waiting for the customers to leave. Quarter past and we still had customers in the store even though we closed at the hour. I hate those days. It means everything is going to be late after that. Still I couldn’t be bothered and left ten minutes before my shift finished. Tomorrow I’m covering for my colleague, even though I’m supposed to be off. I had wanted to be off. So I’m thinking of going to work at 6am and finish it all up in 4 hours. Then I will have the whole day in front of me. 🙂 (If I can be bothered to get up at 5 that is. More likely to go at 7)

At lunch today, or it was actually during those long boring hours in the office I got a breakthrough for I Called Him Gabriel. It’s getting thicker and thicker and November is getting closer and closer and I really want to read that book no. It’s gonna be awesome, I promise. and I’ll put up some excerpts here if anybody’s interested. I don’t want to write about the idea here, I wrote it down during lunch in my black book. All I will say is that I know how Lucifer and Yaan can be brothers. And why. And who taught them about travelling in the shadows. 🙂 If you head over to NaNoWriMo you might read more later on.

That concludes this. I have not watched Pride and Prejudice for a whole week, I’m going through the adaption from 1995. The actors seems so … bad at acting. Especially Jennifer Ehle, who plays Elizabeth. She seem so … bad at acting. I don’t know if the director meant it to be this way, but all of them seem a bit supercilious, and exaggerated in their acting. Colin Firth makes it worth while to watch though. Who wouldn’t want to be at the receiving end of his gaze!

Memorylapses

I must have some plot holes in my brain. Not pot holes but plot holes. Yesterday I thought of blogging. I don’t know where that thought went. It was probably eaten up by work. My dear Supervisor was in an accident of some sort. Nobody really knows. Either that, or she is as sick and tired of work as she said she is and called in sick just because. I’d like to call in sick just because. But my pride stops me. So instead I’m working overtime, I have everybody else at front end working overtime for me too, even though I’m not a supervisor. Because of all sick calls I would have been alone from 3pm to 9pm in checkouts yesterday. When I found this out (nobody had bothered to inform me of this and I doubt any actions would have been taken if my co-worker hadn’t pointed out for me that she was totally alone on Tuesday in check outs) I marched immediately to my Manager and told him that if he didn’t find someone who wanted to work overtime with me on Thursday, I wouldn’t turn up for work. Half an hour later he peeks in through the door to admin office where I was doing some paperwork and whispers to me that he got someone for me. I normally don’t complain and I usually keep quiet and make do with what I have. Except for this time.

Other than that, I’m trying to assemble some Glade Guards, but I’m not that motivated. I’m rebuilding them as I assemble them and that means a lot of greenstuff and a lot of waiting time to let the greenstuff harden. So far I’ve done three heads and two lower bodies. I’m not going to touch the upper bodies I’ve decided.

Moreover only 17 days left.