At least it’s only the 10th of December. If it was next Monday the 17th already I might have to strangle Father Time because that’s just not funny. I still have loads of presents to buy (ugh, or even think about buying; I hate buying presents when I have no idea what to get for someone) and I still need to figure out precisely what I’m doing this month concerning Christmas & family. (Okay — stopping myself from whining…now.)

Things accomplished this past weekend:

We saw The Golden Compass on Saturday! It was terrific, or at least I think so. (SPOILER ALERT. If you’ve read the book and you’re curious about the movie, this won’t really give anything away.) The film was generally well-adapted, though its flow was a little clunky at times. It was terrifically well-acted though by all, though the choice of Ian McKellen’s voice for Iorek Byrnison sort of threw me a little consistently. I kept going, “Where’s Gandalf?! Where?!” and naturally he’s not in this film. Dakota Blue Richards (Lyra) was phenomenally good playing such a fiesty character and I enjoyed that they kept true to her gutsyness throughout. The ending was good — they cut it off right before the scene with Asriel, Coulter, and the gang with Cittagaze in the sky beyond — but despite that it ended well, full of anticipation. Lyra says, in regards to the aleithometer, “It says we’re bringing my father exactly what he needs,” and Bryan and I giggled a little. Oh, that book. It’s so marvelous. But the scene with crossing over will be a lot better to start of The Subtle Knife, though, assuming that movie gets made (I haven’t started Googling New Line’s decision yet — they said they were not going to start production on it until they heard the outcome of the box office). I hope they make it! Will Parry is probably my favorite character in the series. I can’t wait to see who they cast for him.

Now! On to other events of the weekend. We watched Junebug last night (Amy Adams’ Oscar-nominated performance was really worthy of that nod though the movie itself was a little odd) and I spent a large part of Friday through yesterday reading both New Moon and Eclipse, both by Stephenie Meyer. Having read both, I think New Moon, oddly enough, was the best of the series so far. Eclipse left an odd feeling in my mouth, so to speak. (SPOILER: I get very anxious when the main character professes undying love for Character A then realizes she’s also in love with Character B and there’s kissing all around. I get all loyal to the first relationship and I’m very anti-switching-things-up. That, and I don’t like how Jacob treats her opinions — he makes a lot of assumptions that not even Edward made in the beginning; he’s so stubborn he doesn’t hear her. He loves her, yeah we get it, but she loves Edward more so let’s move on. I really just want to see her married to Edward already. I am hoping Meyer doesn’t drag out the Edward versus Jacob for too long. Really. It’s been long enough with the delaying of Bella changing over, I’m just not in the mood to keep waiting for whether or not Jacob’s going to do something insane (because that’s what she’s setting it up to be, what with the epilogue and Jacob running amok. Is he running to stop the wedding? I really hope not… Really. This is why I can’t love these books — it comes down to their being series instead of, well, a tightly wrapped story. If it’d been a simple trilogy… or one novel, it’d be better. But now that it’s going to keep going… I enjoy the characters and situations — New Moon was decent; the Italians won me over, really they did. — but I can’t like the dragging-the-plot-on-for-thousands-of-pages part. COME ON. END IT ALREADY. But depending on how it ends is how I’ll feel about the whole series, I know it.) Me, opinionated? Never!

The one non-spoiler thing that these Meyer books have gotten me thinking about is first person narration. McKinley’s been doing it too lately — with Sunshine, with Dragonhaven – and she’s certainly not the only one. The Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs is written in first person (though the Hurog books were written in third) and that intimacy is interesting; it allows for a lot of casual observations that in third person must be much more carefully inserted to feel organic (and I obsess about the organic). I’m still clinging to third person in my own [fantasy] works at the moment because I have this obsessive need to make all of my voices sound completely distinct (and if they were in 1st person that makes writing three or four books at once, as I’m sort of doing, a lot closer to intellectually impossible — ouch, the brain hurts just thinking of that) and considering my books all star different heroes and at times switch perspectives (though I’d ditch that if I were doing a first person narrative voice, naturally) I keep forcing myself to keep it in third for my own sanity. Even so my narrative styles vary really widely — my language and the way I tell the story moves with the minds of the main characters even when it’s in third person (because even with third person it’s very omniscient and I don’t have a ‘narrator’ character) so it’s a lot more intimate than, say, John Dickinson’s The Cup of the World, which is styled completely differently (more on a deliberate echo of romantic/medieval styles and therefore more detached and focused on language and idiom). At times I think I get much too academic about my creative work. I think I need to stop reading so much and start writing a heck of a lot.

In regards to that: I had a long talk with Bryan yesterday regarding writing, schedules, deadlines, and getting my creative work back on track. He’s said he’ll be happy to bug me about deadlines if that will encourage me to actually work as opposed to sitting around and being lazy; he’ll do whatever it takes if I need him to be there for me. He even said if I finish Story A and realize that’s not the best one to start sending queries about, he has absolutely no problem with waiting for me to work on Story B or C to get that ready. He’s really completely and totally focused on making me simply work, first of all — everything else will come. He knows what I have is good and I know what I have is good, it’s just a matter of me not being lazy about getting it from brain to Word document — because really, that’s what the issue is. The whole brain-to-Word document transition is really just a long process of me getting hand cramps and butt cramps and all of that. He’s completely and totally supportive of me so long as I promise to slog away at the computer (and tolerate the cramps). So I’ve promised. And I am being good; even just blogging gets my fingers moving and gets me in the writing frame of mind. As to that, I go to be a good writing girl.