Musical Mondays

More ear food on this bright Monday Morning.  Today's musical stylings are brought to you by the wonderful artist Ellie Goulding.

I sat here trying to remember how I came across this wonderful artist and it took me a good five minutes, because she's been in my life now almost two months. Her CD Lights is pretty much the only stuff I listen to on my commute to work in the mornings.  

Then I remembered I discovered Ellie on facebook, because a random friend was listening to her on Spotify and I had nothing better to do than look her up on youtube and take a listen.  Little did I know this would lead me to immediately purchasing her CD.  

Today's number however (I should warn all of you Americans, this song is not available in the US, I know it's a crime) is not on Ellie's CD Lights.  I should also say there are two version of a lot of her music.  There is the acoustic and then the electronic. Both are fabulous, I am just showing you the acoustic version today, but look her up!

Title: Wish I Stayed
Artist: Ellie Goulding

Lyrics (azlyrics.com)

Why can't we speak another language, one we all agree on?
Why and when men look outside, do they see houses,
Instead of the fields they grew from?
We are constantly uprooted from them, making us tiresome and fearful,
Can you get up right now? Endeavour to free-fall.

'Cause you can fall if you want to, it's just a matter of how far,
You've treasured your home town, but you've forgotten where you are.
And it will stay with you until you're mind's been found,
and it has been found wondering around.

With that skipping rope, the trampoline,
The crafty smoke that made us choke,
But we didn't give up hope.
It's the simple ways of getting paid,
The carelessness of running away,
I wish I stayed,
I wish I stayed,
I wish I stayed.

Patterns all arranged in my background,
It's pillars and posts keeping this country on form.
Letters were all sent with no addresses so that people can't discover.
We're always undercover.
Why do I always draw triangles instead of words this paper so deserves?

'Cause you see,
I don't own my clothes but I own my mind,
And it's not what you've lost,
But it's what you find.

We found that skipping rope, the trampoline,
The crafty smoke that made us choke,
But we didn't give up hope.
It's the simple ways of getting paid,
The carelessness of running away,
I wish I stayed,
I wish I stayed,
I wish I stayed.

'Cause you can fall if you want to, it's just a matter of how far,
You've treasured your home town, but you've forgotten where you are.
And it will stay with you 'til you're mind's been found,
and it has been found wondering around.

With that skipping rope, the trampoline,
The crafty smoke that made us choke,
But we didn't give up hope.
It's the simple ways of getting paid,
The carelessness of running away,
Now, I wish I stayed,
I wish I stayed,
I wish I stayed,
I wish I stayed,
I wish I stayed.

Finding Center

So I love the film Center Stage. Yes I know it's cheesy, corny, and the acting can sometimes be questionable, but I love it anyway. It's one of those films that makes me stop whatever I am doing and sit down and watch.  No matter what, I will watch this film if it is on TV.

One of my favorite scenes, besides all of the dance sequences, comes at the end of the film. Eva, who's bad attitude at the beginning of the film put her on bad terms with the artistic director, is alone practicing.  She's frustrated because she didn't get the big part, that her director hates her, that she'll never get a job. Then enters her teacher, Juliette Simone.  Eva complains and Juliette tells her something important. A good dancer will always come back to the barre. Other dancers will complain, they didn't like, I should have gotten this, but good dancers come back practice because it is one more time they get to dance.

I love this scene, it can be corny but I love it because I feel that's how you need to describe yourself as an artist. No matter what you return to your art.  You get a bad review, you come back to the blank word document. A CP doesn't like something, you re-evaluate and try to see what they see. An agent sends you a form rejection, you take it and write another day.

I'm not saying it won't hurt like hell, because I can tell you it feels like a punch to the gut.  It feels like you might be a failure.  It feels bad.  And no one likes to feel bad about a piece of their soul.

The important thing is to come back. Nothing should keep you from opening that word document, scrivener, celtx, finaldraft.  Not anyone's comments because believe it or not, you wrote something and it was probably really good in some spots and probably could have been better in others (yes, we must admit our failings).

When I studied physical theater in undergrad, they always focused on the importance of your center of gravity. For women, it's right above the hips. If you focus on this spot while trying to balance, it makes balancing easier.  For me the freedom of a new project is just like finding my center. No matter the stuff I've dealt with that's tipped me over, or made me lose focus, I can center myself again by focusing on a new story, a new set of words. My writing life is not built around others reactions to my work, although I love to get the good reviews, but there are also the critiques of what I need to work on.  So find your center, your barre, your blank page, the one thing that makes you focus back to your writer and makes it easier to deal with all of the crazy stuff.

Do you have a center point for your creative self? Something that helps you deal with all of the crazy stuff? Tell me about it, leave a comment!

Musical Mondays

Shuffling through my iPod I thought this week, Musical Monday, would feature a song that has had a TON of impact on my current MS Infected. 


The story behind this song is really simple. I heard it in a film trailer, looked it up, fell in love. I pretty much am in love with every song I own, so this saying will populate Musical Monday posts like no body's business.

This song I should mention is like one of five on Infected's playlist so I hear it a lot. I like it because I feel this is a conversation my characters would have with each other.  Every time I listen to it, my characters just wake up and start moving about so I always love songs like that.

Song: Dead Hearts
Artist: Stars

Lyrics (azlyrics.com)

Tell me everything that happened
Tell me everything you saw
They had lights inside their eyes
They had lights inside their eyes

Did you see the closing window?
Did you hear the slamming door?
They moved forward, my heart died
They moved forward, my heart died

Please, please tell me what they look like
Did they seem afraid of you?
They were kids that I once knew
They were kids that I once knew

[Chorus]
I could say it, but you won't believe me
You say you do, but you don't deceive me
It's hard to know they're out there
It's hard to know that you still care
I could say it but you wont believe me
You say you do but you don't deceive me
Dead hearts are everywhere
Dead hearts are everywhere

Did you touch them, did you hold them?
Did they follow you to town?
They make me feel I'm falling down
They make me feel I'm falling down

Was there one you saw too clearly?
Did they seem too real to you?
They were kids that I once knew
They were kids that I once knew

[Chorus x2]

They were kids that I once knew
They were kids that I once knew
Now they're all dead hearts to you
Now they're all dead hearts to you

They were kids that I once knew
They were kids that I once knew
Now they're all dead hearts to you

Lucky Seven Meme Award

The Lucky 7 Meme Award Rules are as such:
1. Go to the 7th or 77th page of your work in progress.
2. Go to the 7th line of the page.
3. Copy the next 7 sentences or paragraphs. Remember, they must be as they are typed.
4. Tag 7 authors.
5. Let them know they’re it!

Ok so this is like ratcheting up the lift hill on a roller coaster, because this is a NEW sekrit project.  Only not so sekrit now because I just told you all.  Well anyway, it's tentatively entitled:

The Nightingale

The Unseelie Court is in search of a new Nightingale, and the Queen has her sights set on  musician, Artemis (last name TBD). Her life thrown off kilter and a faery named The Rover on her tail, Artemis might find the only way to escape is to be captured in the first place. (You can see all the images I've collected for this story here)

Now as they say on NPR "the rest of the story" or at least seven sentences from the 7th page starting at the 7th line:

             She winds the car through the passes and lanes.  Dad used to tell people our was was easy to find, you went to the middle of nowhere and turned left. Aunt's new to the middle of nowhere and her diving makes me want to tell her to pull over I'll drive. Only summer residents and tourists drive the speed limit.
            But I let her drive and I stare out the window. Trees and underbrush whip past at the speed of light, blurring into a muddy landscape of snow and brown.  A dash of red pops out and has me sitting up.

And that's all you get folks!  Sorry it was mostly dialogue, but that's the way it goes sometimes.   Now on to the tagging!

This may seem haphazard because I'm not sure I know seven people to tag....sooooooooo I can't tag 7 people so feel free to volunteer for tags and I shall come read your stuff!

1. Emily Hendricks
2. Dana Elmendorf
will you be the first to claim a spot? (Please?)

Musical Mondays

Welcome back to another addition of "Musical Mondays" where I tell you what's playing in my ears.

Like most songs I listen to, this one also comes with a story.  When I am not getting music from friends, I'm probably getting music from TV shows. I watch a lot of TV, because I can count it as homework. Not a joke. Welcome to the life of a film student.

The band this week is Sleeperstar and I first heard them on The Vampire Diaries. Yes I watch this show; the storylines are phenomenal. I highly recommend if you like anything to do with Vampires, Supernatural, Teenager-y dramas. Watch it.

One episode featured a Sleeperstar song and I went to youtube and listened to it until my ears almost rejected me. The song this week, however is not the song on the Vampire Diaries, but another one of their equally amazing songs called "Everything Must Find Its Place."

Sleeperstar
Everything Must Find Its Place

Lyrics (maxilyrics.com) 

This has gotta stop
This has got to be the end
This has gotta die
We will find our end
Oh

Everything must find its place
Find someone to fill the empty space
Everything must find its place

Let it be, let it be my fault
This is you, this is me
Caught in between these cold lies
Saying oh my
Let it be, let it be my fault
This is you, this is me
Stuck in between these old lies
This is all I can take

All of this is wrong
All of this I now regret
The lonely never sleep
She's always in my head
Oh

Everything must find its place
Find someone to fill the empty space
Everything must find its place

Let it be, let it be my fault
This is you, this is me
Caught in between these cold lies
Saying oh my
Let it be, let it be my fault
This is you, this is me
Stuck in between these cold lies
This is all I can say to you

'Cause time is short
Only love will make this run on

Let it be, let it be my fault
This is you, this is me
Caught in between these cold lies
Saying oh my
Let it be, let it be my fault
This is you, this is me
Stuck in between these old lies
Saying oh my
Let it be, let it be my fault
This is you, this is me
Caught in between these cold lies
Saying oh my

Film Fridays

Apparently I am all about alliterations on this blog. Musical Mondays and now Film Fridays.  It's something that I really can't run from because I'm getting my MFA in producing. Let me say this producing is not production. They have the same root word but they are not the same thing. Not the same thing at all. It's also not a difference in paycheck. 

Production students focus on the making of film/TV. The camera, the lights, writing, directing and the like. 

Producers can and do some or all of the following: writing, hiring crew/writers/actors, budgeting, marketing, getting financing, finding material, finding a distributer, filling out festival paperwork, dealing with studios, dealing with networks, often times dealing with both at the same time, making sure the who crew has everything they need to make a film, making sure everything is running smoothly, making sure we get the shots we need...it's really a long list of things. Basically if it's going to happen, producers make it happen. 

So what is a producer? We make movies/tv/web series happen. This is why producers are awarded the Best Picture Oscar.

We also often don't share the spotlight, we make it happen and then we let others take the stage.  For example do you know who Emma Thomas is or  Kathleen Kennedy? Thomas produces the Batman films and Kennedy work as a producer for Steven Spielberg and now has her own company and more recently was named co-chair of George Lucas's company. 

I think it's interesting how the public doesn't normally know these people, but they are highly influential when it comes to making TV and film. Not that this is a bad thing, until I got interested I didn't know many producers.  I feel we're sort of like book editors, we make things happen but unless you're in the field you often don't even know to thank them.

Out of curiosity what is your favorite film and who was the producer? (Check out IMDB.com for help looking up crew)?

YA Highway- Movie topping Book

Such a question I get everyday. Why because I am firmly straddling the line between the film world and the publishing world. I know a lot about publishing and I know a lot about TV and Film (which is good cause it's my course of study).

This weeks prompt: What movie have you seen that actually (gasp!) improved on the book?

I actually have an opinion on this and I have to say, The Lord of the Rings. Now hold on before you kill me. I have read both the trilogy and seen the films.  And while I am glad Peter Jackson reads the books every year, I could not. I barely made it through once.

I love a good fantasy as much as the next girl, okay probably more than the next girl, because I heart pretty much all things fantasy/paranormal/supernatural, but Tolkien about killed me with the details.  The devil is in the details and Tolkien proved it.

But while is loaded-up prose made me want to jump ship, they made for a spectacular movie.  I think what the movie was able to do was get at the heart of the story, cut away the not as essential parts and paint a world so rich that I felt Middle Earth was a real place.

So Lord of the Rings Movies improvement on the books.

Muscle Stretching

I'm sure if you're a creative person, you've heard the phrase creativity is a muscle. I firmly believe this. And like any muscle it must be stretched.  Every day.

Does this mean I work on the same project everyday? No of course not. I recently took up a running program, and while I do run three out of seven days a week on the other days I do other things. Lift weights, bike, swim. All of this comes back to my running because it helps build endurance, strength, and the like. I believe the same goes for creativity.

Once you break it out and start using it every day it starts to work on its own. Writing becomes easier, plotting becomes easier, heck editing becomes easier. But since you don't have to be creative on the same project every day what are ways you can be creative.

I always like to keep a book of what I like to call false starts. They're quick things I do in like an evening. I might spend an hour at most on them. Sometimes I spend as little as fifteen minutes on them. They're sort of like a warm up, like stretching before a run.

Pintrest has become my newest creativity technique. Pintrest is an online pin board where you can collect images and group them together. It's been a great start to help me collect my thoughts on new up coming projects. Anymore, I like to begin with a Pintrest session. I'll look through recent pins and see if they fit in a story I'm currently working on or if they might inspire something new and different.

I like to idea mine. Which is what I do as I wrap a project. My favorite site is io9.com. It's a blog that curates all kinds of whacky and interesting articles. Sometimes it's fun just to browse through them and see what new things they can bring to my head.  A simple article may inspire an entire short story or even the beginnings of a novel.

To keep everything organized I use post-its. Which I know isn't always the best thing. But on my desk there is a big (real) cork board, onto which I pin all of my post-it musings. Sometimes it's an idea for a plot twist in my WIP. Other times it's something interesting I want to remember, like rendez-vous camping--which is seriously cool, you should google it.

All of this idea grabbing, creative thinking all comes back when I work on my actual novel. Because my brain is used to thinking in a creative space. I can just sit and say yes it's time to write and my brain says "I know what to do!"   Like any sort of exercise it takes work and consistency to keep my brain on track and saying it can do it. But the more I delve into creativity the easier it comes to me.

What are your warm-ups for writing? Or what do you like to do for creative inspiration?

Musical Mondays

So one of my critique partners, does this thing called Sunday Downloads, where she lets people in on all the awesome sauce songs she listens to. (You can find her blog here: http://asquirrelamongstlions.blogspot.com/).

I thought in the spirit of sharing music, because my writing survives on the airwaves, I would share something I've been writing to for the past few days. I shall try to be regular about Musical Mondays because I love music, but I will be honest, I get addicted to a song and poof it's all I listen to for a month.

Anyway today's musical stylings come from a friend of mine, a different friend than CP friend. I've known this girl from high school and she's sort of my outlet into the indie music scene. We sometimes trade interesting songs. Last week I asked her to go on a music binge and recommend me some tunage. She gladly did this.  I wound up with like twenty songs smacked onto my wall. I love most of them.

This band is call Hungry Ghosts (don't you just love that title? I do.) and they do all instrumental. The song is: "I Don't Think About You Anymore, But I Don't Think About You Any Less"

The picture is beautiful the music is hauntingly gorgeous.  Hungry Ghost has an entire CD and from the samplings of iTunes, I'm pretty sure I know where my next CD purchase will go.

I hope you enjoy the music and write something fabulous today.

Begin....now.

There have been a lot of famous words written about beginnings. For starters, "In the beginning...."

What a way to start a story. In the beginning there was a girl who wanted to blog. So she started to blog.  She had been given reasons why she shouldn't, the prime one "The world does not need another blog." This is factual. The world does not need another blog; the world needs a lot of things, but rarely does it need something like a blog. A world needs nothing really. Thus the girl defied that world and gave it a blog. Her blog....take 2.

From her desk, to her blog, to you.

It has also been written that a beginning comes from some other beginnings end. This is also true. Off in La-LA Land comes from the end of Scribbling on the Page, which if you're here from there, HI!  Sometimes things come to an end because of big long drawn out stories and sometimes the answer is really quite simple. In this case, it's the later. I wanted something a little more put together  on one account. Before this blog, my twitter, blog, and other social media apparatuses were spread over three separate emails. For convenience sake, I made it all under one. Huzzah!

Fun Fact Break. Most of my beginnings start with this: 

Some famous person once said "beginnings are tough" someone buy that person a pair of shoes, because it is true, beginnings are tough. This beginning is tough, but I will make a bargain with you reader, you read, I'll write and together we'll find stories a plenty. For that is the goal of every beginning is it not, to find a story?

When the going gets tough, this blogger calls in back-up. These guys constantly guard her books:

Don't mess with them, they're Roman Hoplite Soldiers. Also a glass octopus. Don't mess with the glass octopus.

Here is my begin--againing.  Do you ever find yourself, beginning something again. Craft projects, writing, work out programs...anything really. Everything has a beginning care to share one of yours? Leave me a message.