"Pen on Fire", "Night at the Museum" and Icon Meme
A busy few days. Vacations are nice, but I need to get more done! Still, today I have a book review for Pen on Fire
The book's full title is Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within and it's an eminently approachable book, tailored to women but not exclusively so. It's women-focused in that the life stories and examples the author, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, draws from seem to come back to questions that women have about balancing work, creativity and their personal lives.
It's in the vein of The Artist's Way, though less touchy-feely and with shorter chapters. However, the basic structure remains (that each chapter ends with an exercise, timed for fifteen minutes for the most part) that encourages you to exercise your writing muscles, so to speak. The author runs a radio interview show with other writers, so it gets a bit name-droppy at times with stories gleaned from those many encounters. On the other hand, she's good at drawing examples from crime writers, literary fiction authors and other genre writers to support her suggestions.
The book's structure might be a bit hard to follow. Although I read it pretty much straight-through, you're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to read a chapter, do the exercise, rinse and repeat, on and off in your few bits of spare time. On the other hand, if you treat it like a mine of information, you can pull out the individual chapters that are useful for you at the moment and dive into each of them. DeMarco-Barrett treats with problems of character creation, revision and outlining in flexible, inspiring ways. She's very big on the value of rewriting, but only at the end of a project, for instance, as you tend to get sidelined, otherwise. She deals with the issue of putting something out to market but in a very realistic way (write it first, if it's fiction, don't leave it unwritten -- the good writer who never finishes anything will always be trumped by the mediocre writer who actually completes work).
It's nothing new to set the world on fire (bad pun, I know), but it's good as a support for the aspiring writer. Even someone such as myself, who has to write a lot for her job, can find useful advice in this book
a movie review for Night at the Museum
We took the girls out, this afternoon, to see this movie. Youngest was a bit dubious since there were parts that seemed scary and confrontational (scary she can handle up to a point but she hates confrontation or argument and will run screaming from a room if it figures in a show). However, we'd been assured by my dad and sister that this was a great movie for her and, boy!, they were right. All four in the family enjoyed the movie.
Ben Stiller's great in the lead role, underplaying it a bit, which is good, as the reluctant new night guard replacing three retiring veterans (Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs) at a museum with a surprising secret -- that all the exhibits come alive at night. Rather violently alive, if you've seen the commercials! It isn't just an excuse to run wild with sight gags and cameo appearances (though they do a bit of that). There's a cohesive storyline that pulls this all together with a bit of mystery and a lot of adventure. Larry (Ben Stiller) and his son end up having to recover an important artifact that causes the nighttime magic at the museum while, at the same time, come to terms with the environment and each other. There's a wonderful, small role played by Carla Gugino as the docent, Rebecca, who's stuck in an interminable dissertation about Sacajawea she can never complete because she just doesn't understand the historical woman, all the while the same character comes to life each night at the museum. Robin Williams is mostly understated as Teddy Roosevelt (or as he later admits, a wax mannequin of the same that was constructed in Poughkeepsie) and his scenes with Stiller are among the best of the film (although the miniature cowboy played by an uncredited Owen Wilson and the diorama Octavius played by Steve Coogan do give these guys a run for their money).
I can see acquiring this film on DVD (not that I don't already have a lot of DVDs, I'm not exactly picky!) because we all would enjoy seeing it again and again.
and an icon meme
Here are all of my icons
Tell me:
which one you like just because;
which one you think fits me best;
which one you think fits you best;
which one you think I should use more often