Who let Jack out of the freezer?

(You know how I feel about spoilers. There may be spoilers in this post. Fairly warned be thee, says I.)

My favourite thing about The Shining (and it's something I was unaware of until it was pointed out a few years ago by my dad) is this: Everything that happens in the movie can be explained in non-supernatural, rational terms, such as hallucinations and general craziness on the part of Jack and, to a lesser extent, Wendy... except for one thing.

When Wendy locks Jack in the walk-in refrigerator and goes to get help, the ghost of the former caretaker lets him out.

It's not the most obvious of moments. The movie never makes a big deal of it. But it remains the only physically impossible action in the story. And I love that Kubrick never felt he needed to make a big deal of it--by the simple inclusion of that one impossible thing, he opens up the possibility that everything in the story is real, and it's not just an isolation-induced madness hallucination.

Watching Pan's Labyrinth for the second time (I'm rarely smart enough to spot these things on the first watch-through), I was delighted to notice that Del Toro had included a similarly impossible moment: The little girl is locked in her room, and draws a chalk doorway to escape. It's different enough that I wondered whether it was a deliberate nod to Kubrick, but the effect is the same--a single impossible act that allows the possibility that everything we've seen is real.

And then, last night we watched The Devil's Backbone, which I haven't seen for years but which is still a wonderful scary little movie. (The CGI looks a little creaky in places, but that's not fatal in this case because Del Toro has always been smart enough to use CGI to enhance a movie rather than structuring a movie around the effects.) (I haven't seen Pacific Rim yet, by the by.) And there it was, right towards the end of the film--the children are locked in a room, and a ghost unlocks the door for them.

It's a little fan-girl moment that's going to keep me happy all day. :)

Displacement Activities

Bored with this story. Fed up of trying to make today's word count. Getting distracted by any and all shiny objects within my eye-line.

So there's nothing for it, I'm going to have to kill off a character in a horrible manner then use his mutilated corpse to inflict havoc on his former companions.

It's probably not the healthiest activity, mentally speaking, but the way today's going it's either that or start flicking elastic bands at random members of the public.

Too, too much

Very interesting article here about the origins of literary revision and how it has altered over the years:

Revising Your Writing

I've never been great at revising and editing. I'm much more a fan of plunging forward with enthusiasm and a vain hope that somehow the work I produce will magically turn out to be brilliant. Over the years though I've started enjoying editing. Taking a big enthusiastic mess and turning it into something I'm happy with (or at least something I don't actively want to set fire to) is a lot more fun than it used to be.

Writing always feels like drawing to me. You start with a sketch, you add lines and shading, you rub out what doesn't work, you add second and third layers and paint over the bits you hate. The finished result rarely resembles exactly what you pictured in your mind. And the big problems you notice straight away in the finished item (bad perspective, misshapen faces, upside down feet) are usually not caused by the last coat of paint, but by a problem deep down in the sketching.

I've come to like editing, especially the stage you reach where you're no longer looking at the sculpture with your eyes but running your figures across its surface and feeling where the lumpy, awkward bits are. You smooth out some places; add texture to others. But at heart it's still the same piece of work you started out with... even if you lose patience, smoosh the clay back down to a single lump, and build something entirely new out of it.

Like most of my metaphors, I'm sure this one will fall apart if I poked at it too long, so I'll leave it at that.

Now is never a good time

The second Camp NaNoWriMo of the year starts today over at www.campnanowrimo.org and, as usual, I'm am both greatly excited to be in a Nano month again and also hugely unprepared for whatever writing project I'm supposed to be undertaking. I like that they've adopted the term "Pantser" to describe those of us who write by the seat of our pants, because that's always been my approach to writing (and to everything else in life, for that matter). I'd love to plan, but who has the time?

Come to that, who has time to write?

I've voiced this opinion before, but no one really has time to do anything. We're all very busy. There's always a very, very good reason not to write, or at least to put it off to tomorrow. For myself, I don't feel like writing at all today - I've just heard some bad news about an old friend, and the last thing I want to do is sit down and write the stupid story I'm supposed to be working on. I would happily put it off till tomorrow or the next day or... how about never? Is never good for you?

Which is one of the reasons I'm writing this blog post, to at least get my fingers moving and get a few words on screen (also, for the purposes of this month's Nano, I'm working on three different projects so have decided that anything I write goes towards my word count, including blog posts), in the hope I might trick my brain into wanting to continue.

So I'll have a cup of coffee and I'll write a procrastinating paragraph and then I'll open that stupid Word document and figure out where the story is going next.

And that's as much of a plan as a proud Pantser like me can cope with.

(320 words! Off I go!)

"I meant, 'man, that was a great movie'."

Maybe it's because we're all spending so much more time these days sharing our thoughts and opinions online, or maybe it's because I'm growing cantankerous in my old age, but there seems to be a whole spoiler culture going on. I've been aware of and annoyed by it for a while, but it's fresh in my mind today because of the new Star Trek movie and the various online attempts of people to irritate me, as well as because of last week's episode of The Big Bang Theory, which as part of the plot had three Harry Potter spoilers and one for the Walking Dead.

Increasingly this seems to be par for the course. People think nothing of casually revealing plot twists, character deaths and endings, in some kind of grand assumption that anyone who cares enough about the films or shows or books in question will already be au fait with what happens.

There're quite a few problems with this assumption. First of all, I live in the UK, where we consistently get TV shows months after they air in the US. Walking Dead for us doesn't restart till October. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to avoid people talking about this show until October? You're all lucky that a) I've already read the comics and b) I don't actually care that much about the Walking Dead anymore.

Problem the second: it encourages piracy. Yeah. In order to keep ahead of the wave of spoilers that invariably follow an episode of any decent show, we have to watch said shows as soon as they come out. Coupled with problem the first above, this means there's a vast temptation to download new episodes quickly, from whatever source we can. It's little wonder the new series of Game of Thrones was apparently the most pirated show ever. Again, consider as a mental exercise how difficult it would be to avoid causal spoilers for that show... and again consider yourselves all lucky I've already read the books.

See, that's another issue - I don't want to have to hurry my reading, or my viewing schedules. I quite like being able to discover things at my own pace. Things are turning into "must-sees" not because they're wonderful or compelling but because we want to see them without preconceptions or leaked knowledge tainting them. I raced through the Harry Potter books even though I didn't particularly like them, because I knew I'd get narked off with people telling me what happens in the later ones.

And one final point... won't anyone please think of the children?

Mark Kermode, who does the Friday movie review show on Radio Five Live, is one of my favourite critics but has an irksome habit of giving away plot twists to classic movies, and does so because he reasons these movies have been out for umpty-thrumpty years and anyone who cared that much would have seen them already. Even disregarding my feelings above on how quickly people are supposed to watch films, what about the kids? There's a generation coming up behind us who've had neither the opportunity nor the inclination to watch a lot of classic movies. How many kids will reach the age where they take an interest in these films without knowing, say, who Rosebud is or what Charlton Heston found on that beach? Or for that matter the true relationship between Luke and Vader? By the time kids hit their teens they will have heard about or seen these twists a dozen times, parodied on the internet or in Family Guy.

(I acknowledge this isn't a new problem, obviously - I first saw a "Rosebud" reference in an episode of Ghostbusters when I was nine.)

Having a teenage child with an interest in movies is like fighting a losing battle with the entire internet. I managed to show him The Sixth Sense before any bugger could spoil it for him - but that did involve letting him watch it when he was twelve, which is not strictly age-appropriate. If we care about our kids seeing movies in an untainted state, does that mean letting them watch movies that are potentially traumatising at that age? Or that they have no interest in? (How can I persuade a teenage boy he really ought to watch Thelma and Louise before he finds out the ending from elsewhere?)

Also (and I appreciate this is a worst-case, scaremongering, and over-dramatic way of looking at things), what are we teaching our kids here? That it's okay ruin the enjoyment of others? We spend a lot of time (hopefully) telling kids that other people are important, as are their feelings and opinions, so this culture of blithely disregarding the feelings of others (even if... especially if it's a faceless mass of strangers on the internet) is troubling to say the least. I've literally met people who thought nothing of telling me the ending of movies because it didn't occur to them that such an action would bother me.

So, in summary... the world is changing, information and the way we share information is changing, and it's making us careless and clumsy. None of this is news. But it is annoying. Stop spoiling stories for the rest of us, you bastards.

Where do you find the time?

This is pretty much the only question I've been asked about writing often enough to make it into an FAQ column. When do you find time to write? And although I've got plenty of glib answers, I think the simple truth is: I don't have time. I've got two kids, a full time job, a husband, and a moderate to severe addiction to Civilisation 5. I've got friends and housework and unanswered emails and lost keys and a dozen other demands on my time. Realistically speaking, I don't have time to write - but then, neither does anyone else.

It constantly baffles me where anyone ever finds time to do anything. My dad plays twenty hours of bridge a week. Where does he find the time? I have friends who keep track of five different soap operas, or four leagues of football fixtures. My sister has approximately seven hundred friends, all of whom seem to be getting married this year. My eldest son follows uncountable blogs, vlogs, pods, youtube accounts, and has just bought Simcity. A guy at work walks ten miles an evening, for fun. Where does anyone find the time?

The simple answer is, I guess we make time for the things we really want to do. I really like writing - it chills me out, it's fun, it's my way of unwinding, and so I'll go out of my way to find time to do it.

Oh sure, sometimes it's a chore, but everyone feels that way about their hobbies sometimes. Sometimes it's a lot more tempting to go to McDonalds than to football practice. Sometimes you want to hang out with your friends rather than work on that dress you're sewing. I guess the trick is not to make excuses too often, because it's ridiculously easy to fall out of the habit of doing something, and once you lose momentum it's so hard to get going again.

So, yeah. Don't know if there's anything of use to be learned from this, but those are my thoughts: have fun with something, and you'll make time for it.

:(

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." - Anton Ego, Ratatouille

This is the only part of Ratatouille I've always disagreed with. Criticism, when it's done well, is a form of art all of its own, and just as valid as anything else. It takes passion and creativity to produce accurate, entertaining reviews. If ever proof is needed of that, we only need to look at the work of the late great Mr Ebert.

You will be hugely missed, sir.