First Cup of Coffee - December 11, 2018

On why powerful endings can make or break a book, thoughts on Burlesque, and why I mix up celebrities. 

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Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. It's Tuesday, December 11th. A little bit of a cloudy day today here in Santa Fe. Just kind of high overcast. I don't think it's gonna produce much. It just makes a little bit dim. Heading in towards solstice, aren't we? Just uh about ten more days. Not sure if it's on the twenty first. Well, or what time on the twenty first, but looks like the twenty first will be the shortest day of the year from what I can see of my calendar across the room. Yesterday I had a good day. I started writing before nine, um, just barely, but I did do it, and I did get 3,000 words by about um 130, and I could have done it faster. I think the other thing I need to do is make my breaks in between shorter. Um, when I've been being good, I set a timer for just a 15-minute break in between the one-hour sprints, and I don't look at email or internet in those times. Um, I can go do other things like walk around or do some tai chi or some yoga, or in the summer I was going out and doing a little bit of gardening in that time. So I think I need to get back in that pattern because if I do something that's too different, it kind of takes me out of the flow of the writing, too. So, but yesterday was good, and I got up on the roof by about um well it was like 1.30 quarter to two, and um, I got five strings up in two hours. So that's about 20 minutes each, which isn't bad for ramping up and getting out my tools and all of that. Um it's about uh two minutes to affix each lantern, so that's probably pretty reasonable. So half of them are up, and they look very pretty, so I'm happy. And I'll do the other half today. And I'm going to put some around the um patio under the portal, and then I'll be done. Done, Johnson. Yeah, so that's good. Definitely a good way to do it with that uh assembling inside and putting them up. And I think that this year I am going to go look for some large hooks to put in the garage ceiling. I've got a spot picked out, and I'm just going to hang those assembled lanterns up instead of taking them all apart again every year. Uh, that just seems silly. I'm gonna see if I can't store them somehow. So that's that's the uh mundane stuff. Uh I am past 30,000 words on Sorcerer's Moons. So we are past midpoint a while ago, um, actually closing in on the end of scene five. Some unexpected things happen. Uh I might have to go back and smooth out a little bit of the arc because I really didn't see this particular event coming. I think you guys will like it, but it is uh took me by surprise. So that's cool. Shaping up well. And let's see, there were a couple of things that I was planning to tell you guys about. Oh, the other thing I did after I finished putting up the luminarias was I came in and I took a hot bath because I was a little bit cold and a little bit sore from the bending over. And then I uh finished putting David while he was out, picked me up some more of the plastic sleeves that go over the top that imitate the paper bags and some more light bulbs, and I finished assembling one last string, the one that will go around the portal. So I finished watching Burlesque, and which I know I mentioned yesterday that I started watching Sunday, and I was like, why did we hate that movie? Or why did the critics pen that movie? Um and I think that it kind of fizzled. It started out pretty good. Um, I mean, it's a very chopey story, it's a very basic story, you know, of the small town girl goes to the big city and to learn to be, you know, to be a star, and she gets to be a dancer, and the girl who is the star of the show resents her, and young girl triumphs, and she falls in love. Uh, all of these things. So, but you know, that story works great. It's the Cinderella story, right? Um, but the ending, there were some good things about the ending, but in some ways it just really lost steam towards the end. And it's an interesting thing. I've noticed this with books too, that um you can get away with almost anything except for lacking a powerful ending. Um people will, it's good to have a good hooky beginning, but readers will often wade through uh a slow beginning if they want to get to the story. And once they're in the story, um they will keep going. But how a reader feels about a book when they're done, I think, has a great deal to do with how that what that ending does, uh, what kind of feeling they are left with. It's um yeah, something that I have really tried to improve over time is to uh have more of that um, you know, we talk about with the story structure, um, excuse me, I'm a little froggy. Have some water. We have the beginning of the story is how they were before, and then they you know go through all their trials and tribulations, and then we have the snapshot at the end of how they are after. And I've come to understand that that how they are after a snapshot is really critical to how the reader feels. They need to see the protagonist in their new situation and how it's better and more wonderful. Hopefully. Uh it's something I see a lot of complaints about on the mark of the tala, uh, that it just ends. And certainly it has a little bit of a surprise ending, and when I wrote that book, I worried that um people would be upset by the ending, and that's um actually not a problem, but you don't really see how they are after. And if I could, if we ever do a new edition of the book, I will add a chapter and put something on the ending there. I would probably do that for all three 12 Kingdoms books. Um, in some ways, the novellas that I've written, um then I wrote a novella that's Asha and Amy's story after The Tears of the Rose that's called The Snows of Windroven, and then um Ursula and Harlan's story and The Talon of the Hawk. That sort of um postscript novella is The Dragons of Summer that just came out in Seasons of Sorcery. And in some ways, those are the postscript endings that I would have put on the stories. Uh I've learned to to add those, and I think it does make a huge difference. Yeah, it's I I notice it in a lot of things that um I can read a book that's very meh or that I'm not happy with, and if the ending is great, then I'll end up with a good feeling overall. I mean, ideally you want the whole thing to be wonderful, of course, but um I don't know. I'm curious, you know, those of you who read a whole lot, if you've had that experience, if there's a book that you thought was only okay, but then the ending sold you, or if um there was a book that you loved except for the ending, and that you would change the ending or add to it in some way. I think that's partly what people claim complain about with cliffhangers. I mean, with cliffhangers, the story is not over, and so that's um you know problematic right there. But I wonder if part of it is because it gives them, gives the reader, gives us that unfinished feeling, which it is unfinished, so it's a legit feeling. But um yeah, you don't get that happy sense of completion at the end. That's that's really just so critical. And then last night was kind of funny because I didn't want to start watching a show. It was getting kind of late, and I was tooling around on YouTube, which I can watch via the Roku. I'd seen um, it was sort of continuing my interest in burlesque and so forth, that I'd seen a trivia point about Christina Aguilera had said that one of the favorite things that she'd ever done was the Lady Marmalade video with Pink Maya and Lil Kim. And I was thinking, I don't think I've ever seen that. So I was looking up that video, and uh Isabel's outside my closed office door meowing. That's what that sound was. So um, so that was good. I mean, it wasn't an incredible video, but I liked it, it was interesting to see, and then I was kind of branching out from there, just watching various other things, and so this is an insight into how my brain works. I think this is just such a funny thing about how I remember stuff. So, a long time ago, or not all that long, a couple years ago, I was absolutely convinced that I had seen a music video of Taylor Swift's, and I thought it was with her 1989 album, and I thought it was a video um like her one for blank space with the big um mansion and the the rich men and everything. Um I thought I was just sure that I had seen her do a video where she was in a mansion like overlooking the sea or something, and that Alexander Skarskard was in it, and that he kills her. And I had looked and looked for this video, and I had gone through and I'd watched all of the 1989 videos and the ones from um is it rep, yeah, reputation, because I enjoy her videos and I enjoy how she connects them story-wise, repeats images and so forth. So I kept looking for this video, and I was like, where is it? And I had tried all these different kinds of searches, and I had asked people, and people would just sort of give me these puzzled frowns. Well, I found it last night, and the big problem is it was not Taylor Swift, it was Lady Gaga. Um, and Lady Gaga did this video with Alexander Skarsgard. Um, and it's for uh paparazzi. So, so I just think that's funny that I can cross my wires like that. I was just, I could see Taylor Swift in that video, and it reminds me of another uh dramatically wrong impression I had a number of years back, and I think I've told this story before, some of you might be familiar, but uh it's mystifying to many, many people. But way back in the day when Matt Damon and Ben Affleck did Goodwill hunting, and they burst on the scene with that movie, and everybody talked about it, and they were the new up-and-coming thing. Well, at the same time, more or less, there was another movie called Something About Mary with Ben Stiller and Matt Dylan, and I got these two things fatally confused in my mind for some reason, mostly to the extent I really I knew who Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were, and I had seen and really liked Goodwill Hunting. So when we watched something about Mary, I kept looking for Ben Stiller and Matt Damon. And people would say, and or I'm sorry, Ben, see, look, I just had I would kept looking for Ben Affleck, and I couldn't figure out the the Matt Dillon character. You know, that we were watching it, and I was saying, well, where is Matt Dillon? And they would be like, that's Matt Dillon, right there. That's Matt Dillon being the detective. And I was thinking, wow, that's amazing makeup, because he looks nothing like he looked in Goodwill Hunting. I couldn't figure out how Ben Stiller why he looked so different than he had looked in Goodwill Hunting. And it took me a really long time to sort out this confusion because nobody understood how I could possibly confuse Ben Stiller and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and Matt Dillon. But, you know, if you are a careful listener, you will discern exactly why I confuse those. And it's because of the cadence and similarity of the names. Uh, I I remember words so much better than images that I uh yeah, I'll I'll just get something in my head like that, and the the words will try to shape the universe. I'm not sure exactly what happened with the uh Lady Gaga Taylor Swift mix-up, except that they're both blonde, slender singers. Um it could be because I was staring at Alexander Skarsgrat the whole time. Hard to say. So, anyway, um, those are my thoughts for the day. And I think I will sign off and get to it. Hope you all have a terrific Tuesday, and I will talk to you tomorrow. Bye bye.