Long time, no blog

May 25, 2012 12:05




Excited Liz Dance

Life managed to get in the way plenty these past few weeks so apologies for not blogging loads.

The good news is: Grimm 4.0 is now done in its big olde fatte drafte format.  Hurrah.  This of course means I am now editing it.  And you know, if you’re an aspiring writer and people encourage you to write, love them for it, but know this: writing is rewriting.  And it’s hard.  But it is also such tremendous fun.

We’ve been to see The Avengers twice.  We also saw Cabin in the Woods, twice.  We are stocked up on Whedonisms to last us for a while but regardless, we love both movies bunches and I look forward to being able to watch them at home.

We also saw The Raid.



I love martial arts movies.  They genuinely appeal to me as they are visually stunning, they get your heart pumping with adrenalin and excitement and invariably, if the script and director does things well, you get quite a decent storyline happening.  The Raid has all of this in buckets - there is this one fight sequence where the main character Raka fights the Bad Guys in this passage of the derelict building.  It blew my mind.  I want to go back and watch this movie - particularly for that sequence.  The choreography is just mind-bending and you know when you leave a movie and you actually ache because it felt so real and you feel so battered? That, a thousand times that.  I walked out of the movie, into HMV and bought a copy of Merantau Warrior, directed and choreographed by the same people.  Mark and I went home and immediately popped it into the DVD player and loved it as much, although the story is far sadder.

Oh, and the soundtrack to The Raid is simply superb.  When payday comes round, it will be mine, oh yes it will!

Two weeks ago now - can’t believe it - I went off on a Writing Retreat arranged by SCBWI and had a brilliant time.  There were workshops and talks but also lots of alone time to go for walks and eat cake and drink tea, and very importantly, to write.  I added a crucial two chapters to the end of Grimm as I didn’t think it left Kit in the right place.  I do now however think she’s come full circle as a heroine and I like that.

Tomorrow I’m aiming to head to RFH to get some re-writing and editing done - I joined as member a few weeks ago now, so I can go sit on the 6th floor and stare out of the windows across the river and look pensive and writerly.  <- this by the way is what writers do, in case you didn’t know.

There has been great things happening in the lives of a handful of friends.  My friend Tanya Byrne’s book: Heart Shaped Bruise published by Headline, got off to an amazing start with some awesome reviews.  My friend Sharon Jones announced her two book contract with Orchard through her lovely agent Jenny Savill.  My friend Mo announced her 3 book deal with Macmillan this morning through her agent, Gemma Cooper.  I tell you, being around girls this talented and this lovely, is genuinely inspiring.  I suspect I’ve got around 45% more wrinkles now cos of all the smiling.  I totally blame them!

I’ve also been reading some great books.  Alex Bledsoe’s The Hum and the Shiver for one - oh gods, just so good, so beautifully written and evocative.  I can’t wait to read more of his books.



Also: NK Jemisin has rapidly become one of my favourite female authors.  I’m indulging in The Killing Moon.  You know when you get into a book so much that you feel the words under your skin, in your blood, in your head? That’s what reading NKJ’s books do to me.



If you’re at a loss as to what to read, you can do far worse than picking up either of these books to indulge in.

Mirrored from Liz De Jager.
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