Category Archives: Words Words Words

Hellboy

The four-word review:

They got it right.

Yeah, sure, they took a few liberties with the stories in order to make a unified two-hour plot, but they got it right.

The characterisation, the art direction, the cinematography, the music (who the heck is Marco Beltrami anyway?), the pacing, the editing…

I find myself flipping through the calendar to figure out how many days I have to wait before the film premieres in general release so I can see it again.

A colleague sitting next to me at the advance screening said at the end that it wasn’t as good as X-Men, but I disagree. This is the most realistic superhero-type-genre film I’ve seen, with a better script. But they’re apples and oranges, really. This is, well, dark comedy/occult/action. I’m a fan of dark comedy and the occult, and hey, well-done action’s all right too, if it has a purpose.

It was a geek reunion at the advance screening too, with a significant portion of old clientele from the four-years-defunct F/SF bookshop at which I used to work in attendance.

All in all, it was a wonderful day, what with speaking with my author of the Pacific coast and confirming a major amount of the revisions in the first half of the manuscript, beautiful weather, seeing my goddaughter, taking my husband out to dinner, seeing a fantastic film, and having coffee with friends afterwards. I haven’t felt so good in ages. And of course, none of this would have been possible without Debra, who gave us the movie pass! You made my day, and quite possibly my week. Maybe even my month.

To All Aspiring Authors:

When an editor asks you for a more sophisticated tone, simply using more ten- and fifteen-cents words instead of perfectly good five-cent words will not achieve this for you. “Utilise” instead of “use,” “perceive” instead of “see,” and “ponder” instead of “think about” merely clutters up the prose for the reader. Get to the point. A thesaurus is a useful tool for a writer at times, yes; however, your reader shouldn’t have to use one to get through your book. Sophistication arises from how you approach the subject, not the words you use to discuss it.

Thanks.

Oops

We had two people over last night for dinner.

We had to call Skippy and borrow chairs for the dining room table, because we only have two.

Hmm. Evidently we don’t do sit-down dinners for our guests very often, or we’d have noticed this lack sometime over the past thirteen months.

Note to self: Invest in two more chairs for the dining room table to avoid looking like a dork in the future.

Invocation of DayQuil

Hail, powers of DayQuil, conqueror of sinus infections, cold, and flu.
I invoke the powers of Pseudoephedrine Hydrochloride, Dextromethorphan Hydrobromide, and blessed Acetaminophen.
With your might I banish infection and congestion, muscle ache and sore throat.
I invite the ability to breathe clearly and to edit a whole page of this manuscript without coughing so hard that I see spots.
For the good of all (and I really mean it), and with harm to none (because I wouldn’t wish yet another cold on anyone this spring),
So mote it be.

(Yeah, this wretched cold is courtesy of my husband, who feels appropriately guilty. Nothing’s stopping me from seeing the advance screening of Hellboy tonight, though — nothing, I tell you!)

An Exercise in Frustration, Starring the Bank

As I’m a consultant for an American publisher, I naturally get paid in cheques drawn on an American bank. I must present these in person in order to deposit them. Today I went to my local branch to deposit the hefty cheque retaining my services as imprint specialist for one year.

I was told they had to hold the cheque for twenty-five business days.

That’s five weeks.

When I dared to ask why, and told them I’d had no problem depositing the last cheque from this particular company four months ago, I was informed that perhaps my branch would let the cheque through, since they knew me personally, but this branch could not help me.

So off to the West Island I travelled, and learned that the cheque has to be frozen for five weeks for three reasons:

(1) The bank currently has no employment record for me on file.
(2) It’s a US cheque.
(3) My current financial profile flags a transaction like this as dangerous.

Of course the bank has no employment record on file — I’ve been freelancing for the past two years. The teller was much more helpful than the last one; she helped me make an appointment for a financial review to upgrade my bank privileges, processed the cheque, froze the majority of it but left five hundred dollars clear so I’d at least have some money available, and explained that the successful deposit of the last US cheque was a fluke that should have flagged the system as well.

I’m a bit grumbly, as it’s taken six weeks for this cheque to get to me from the moment it was printed, and now it will take another five weeks before I can actually officially have the money. I understand that the bank has safety precautions, but still, it grates that I pay them for inconveniences like this. Sometimes I really think that keeping my money in an old sock where I can get my hands on it when I need it, and no one can charge me for the privilege of using my fortune for their own investment, is the solution.

Creativity Insurance

Today was the weekly writing jam in which I participate, where three of us get into the same room and hunch over our laptops, typing madly. It’s creativity insurance: for at least one afternoon each week, we get some writing done, because if the sound of your fingers hitting the keys ceases, someone bullies you into starting again. (“No retreat, no revision, no regret!” Ceri announced during a writing lull this afternoon. “No words,” t! replied succinctly. This is funny on several levels, for t! is the original author of the writer’s threefold war cry Ceri quoted. If you know t! in any way, you also know the idea of having no words is a paradox in his world.) Last week Ceri worked on developing content for her web site, and this week I decided that since I’d been uploading a ton of stuff to Owldaughter, I’d take her work as inspiration and use the afternoon to work on some sort of introduction for the spirituality section. I pulled off fifteen hundred words this afternoon, which wasn’t bad at all. Then tonight, after my husband went to bed, I pulled off another seventeen hundred. That brings my total to just over 3,200 words for the day.

Awesome.

I also got another couple of chapters of that manuscript edited. Tomorrow morning I’ll draw up the editorial memo, run it past my contact at the publisher, then send it and the first third of the book off to the author.

Making progress, yes, indeed…