From Mary Anna--Lists of lists...

We're starting a new theme at The LadyKillers.  Our pattern of two-week themes reminds me of the rhythm of a novelist's life.  We are people with long, but not infinite, attention spans.  It is our business to start a project, then carry it to completion through steady and painstaking work that stretches out over a year or more.  But one day we do finish, and we get that exhilarating rush of starting something new, one more time.

This fortnight's theme is Lists.  I was at a dinner party last weekend where we went around the table and listed the movie stars with whom we would most like to...um...have dinner.  (This is a family-friendly blog.)

It was a fun list to make, so I thought I'd share it here, but I feel compelled to also give you something of value, like maybe a list of useful tips for writing.  Since there's no word count cap and because I'm feeling magnanimous...you get both!

Writing tips from a LadyKiller

1.  Write every day.  Yeah, I live in the real world, too.  Sometimes you have to take your kid to the emergency room.  But your default schedule needs to include writing on a regular and frequent basis, or your skills will never improve and you will never finish your book.  It's the single best way to say to yourself that you are serious about your craft.

2.  Play with the language.  Before you write an important descriptive scene, make a list of words that you love that give you the feeling you want to communicate.  (And no, you don't have to use every last one of them and they don't all have to be fancy.  You don't want to sound like you dropped your thesaurus and all the cool words fell out.)  Maybe you could write a haiku with those words, boiling the feeling down to seventeen syllables.  You want to choose the best words and use only enough of them to achieve your goal for that scene.

3.  If you have any doubts about your grammar and spelling, get a book or take a course.  These things can be learned, and they are the tools of your trade.  I have never seen an unpublished book with really poor mechanical skills that I thought would be publishable if the grammar were corrected.  I have a theory that the logic required to construct a complex sentence is related to the logic required to construct a plot.  In other words, you will not be wasting your time in gaining these skills.  You will be developing an important brain function.  (I think math does this for your brain, too, but I'm not going to assign you any algebra homework.  You're welcome.)

4.  Write the book that ignites your passion.  If I wanted to do work that I enjoyed but that didn't ignite my passion, I would still be an engineer, and I'd be making a lot more money.  :)

5.  With apologies to Nike, just do it.

And now, my movie star list.  Bear in mind that it's my fantasy, and if it involves passions that can only be requited with the aid of a time machine, that's my business.  I hope you find your own passions, dear readers.

1.  Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday. 1953.

2.  Harrison Ford in Star Wars. 1977.

3.  Brendan Fraser and Hugh Jackman, because they're within ten years of my age.  Right this minute.

4.  Robert Downey, Jr., because he's even closer to my age, but he gets a separate entry because, despite the fact that he's now clean and happy, I still suspect that the man is trouble.  (But very interesting trouble.)  Right about now.

5.  William Shatner on the bridge of the Enterprise. 1967.

6.  Chris Pine when he's roughly my age now and, I hope, still on the bridge of the Enterprise.  Roughly 2030.

7.  Captain Kirk, sometime in the 23rd century.  I told you I needed a time machine.

Leave some comments and tell me who you'd like to...um...meet for dinner.  Don't leave me in this fantasy world alone...

Mary Anna 

 

Comments

[Toby Speed]

Been enjoying your blog, Ladykillers. I'd like to have dinner with most of the guys you mentioned, Mary Anna, plus Javier Bardem and Gerard Butler. I look forward to your upcoming posts!

[Mary Anna]

Hello, Toby, and I think you have very excellent taste in men. :) I'm glad you're enjoying the blog!

[Cathy Akers-Jordan]

Good writing advice and great taste in men! :)

[Mary Anna]

Why, thank you, Cathy.

If you have any of those men's phone numbers, just forward them on to me. Or not, since I think they're all either married, my father's age, my son's age, or dead. :) But beautiful, nonetheless...

[Staci McLaughlin]

Writing Tip #2 is a great suggestion and a good reminder to use active, colorful words. No sense using ten words to describe something when the perfect one or two words can do the job better.

As for movie stars, I'd pick Jason Statham from The Transporter.

[Mary Anna]

Note to self: Watch The Transporter. Come up with some active and colorful words to describe Jason Statham.

[Camille Minichino]

Simon Baker, now, because even though he's working to cover up that adorable accent, I know it's there.

And Javier, just for that one red-shirt scene in Vicki, Christina, Barcelona.

And, of course Robert De Niro always, but especially in Falling in Love, the movie with Meryl Streep and Rizzoli's!

Well, thanks a lot Mary Anna, there'll be no sleeping tonight.

[Winnie]

Both perfectly lovely lists; would God I could find List 2 as useful as List 1 (the first item is a particular bugaboo). I'd add two items, both vital:

(6) Hang tough: Believe in yourself, in your gift for words, and in people's need for great, wise, and/or funny stories ... even when you can't get anyone to pay you for writing them. :)

(8) Timothy Dalton, of course, at any time and in any costume. Double :) :).

[Ann]

Hmmm... I have a penchant for "bad boys of the West" and other historical movie characters. Clint Eastwood as the Man With No Name (mid-1960s vintage, pre-Dirty Harry). Other spaghetti Westerns... Oh! Liam Neeson in Rob Roy... oh yeah.

[Mary Anna]

Why does your penchant for "bad boys of the West" not surprise me, Ann? :) Clint Eastwood...yes, he's a worthy addition to the list. And so are the others mentioned. Liam Neeson gets a double thumbs-up, because he taught Obi-Wan Kenobi everything he knew. :-D

Yes, Winnie, there's a reason we've been telling stories to keep away the dark ever since we did it while squatting around a campfire in front of a cave. We need them to explain the unexplainable.

[Priscilla Royal]

Being greedy, I'd like to invite three to dinner:Emma Thompson, Meryl Streep, and Helen Mirren. Then I'd like to pour myself a glass of cool wine and sit back, shut up myself for a change, and just listen to those three talk...

[Mary Anna]

I'd listen to those three women read the tax code.

[Gail]

Am I ever with you on Robert Downey Jr. I don't think he'd be intimidated by a woman a tad older. Yes, I think he's trouble. He's also funny and very, very hot in that deadly smart ass way. I think dinner needs to involve oysters, strawberries, and all sorts of effervescent delights (while still respecting everyone's sobriety.)

[Mary Anna]

I adore oysters, strawberries, and effervescent delights, and I think sobriety is hot. So if Robert Downey, Jr., is listening and if he's single, which I think he's not, I'll buy him some strawberries any day of the week.

My theory on younger men is that if they're over forty, they're old enough to know better. :) Robert Downey, Jr. is three years younger than me, and I think that's just about perfect. :-D

On the flip side, when approached by a man under, say, 35, I have an irresistible urge to offer him milk and cookies and ask if he finished his homework before he came out drinking.

[Mary Anna]

Sometimes I hear from readers who want to let me know that they enjoyed a particular line. (Don't you love the internet? Back before the Internet, I'm certain people rarely picked up a pen and paper to let writers know about individual pearls of wisdom.)

Anyway, I got an email yesterday that tracks perfectly with this conversation. It actually came from my Cousin Bell, who is reading FLOODGATES. She said she loved this observation about Faye: "Truth be told, she was a fan of men in all their forms."

I guess Faye and I are a lot alike. :-D