Your Dark Passenger

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you…

Just don’t forget to toss them a wicked grin of mischief.  Gotta keep ‘em guessing.  I mean, what’s really worse - giving them the revenge treatment they deserve or letting them squirm while they wait for the axe to drop?

In case you never turn on the television or don’t live close enough to your local movie theatre to hear the squeals of glee, much acclaimed debut novel of Stephanie Meyer, Twilight, hit the big screen this weekend.  Never heard of it?  Click here for full details.  In short, we’re talking about dark romance, the timeless bonds of family and vampires.

Need I say more?  Really?  Enough said.

Anyway, fans of the Twilight series are very familiar with hottie vampire boyfriend (object of much lust) Edward Cullen and clumsy high school junior Bella Swan.  It’s your typical love story, really.  Boy meets girl.  Boy and girl fall in love.  Boy has to fight his desire to drain girl of every drop of her blood.

On the surface, it doesn’t sound like the kind of plot that would break box office records in its opening weekend; Twilighters (fans of the Twilight series) knew different.  In the Dallas/Fort Worth area alone, showings were sold out days in advance.  The question on everyone’s mind was whether the movie could possibly life up to the greatness of the novel.

Only time will tell if the Twilight movie can live up to the hype once the die-hard Twilighters have left the theatre and the general public is finally able to take a seat, but if the midnight showing for which I was able to get tickets is any indication then everyone will be able to agree on one thing: the actors were, well…wow-hot.  Whole discussion boards have passed the time until the premiere discussing at length whether Robert Pattison would make a suitable on-screen Edward Cullen.  (You may remember him from his role in the Harry Pottermovies as Cedric Diggory) My own sister told me the day I purchased our Twilight tickets online that she had a problem with him in the role as she felt his hair was “all wrong.”  Of course, the moment he first walked onto the screen I looked over at her - yes, I do get major big sister points for taking her to 12:01 screening - and could tell by the hanging jaw she recanted her earlier statement.

As you may have already gathered, I enjoyed Twilight (movie and book) a great deal.  Yes, I would have perhaps enjoyed it more had I not had a theatre full of teenagers oohing and ahhing and giggling over everything.  And it was a bit distracting during a kiss scene to have a group of boys in the back shout, “Oh, get over it already and just kiss her,” but that’s the beauty of being a grown-up, I suppose.  They all have to go back to school after the Thanksgiving holiday and I can still go back for a second (or third) viewing of the movie in the middle of the day on Wednesday. Ha.

But don’t take my word for it.  Read Twilight and pick a side.  Team Edward or Team Jacob?  Life or Death?

Oh…and don’t forget to pace your diet coke consumption during the movie.  It’s two hours long, you know.

If you don’t have anything nice to say then at least have the decency to bring me chocolate.  I’ll be less likely to notice the insult while on my chocolate high.

It’s odd the way things work out when you’re a writer.  Writer’s block - that dastardly foe of every wordsmith alive - is often thought of as the worst obstacle fledgling and tenured writers alike must overcome.  Like countless others before me, I’ve sat in front of the computer, staring at the blinking cursor until my eyes blurred and my head throbbed.  I’ve made the rookie mistake of thinking I could go back and reread a chapter or two up until where I left off to jump-start the creative juices, only to waste the whole day tweaking passages that really didn’t need it.  To say the least, it is unpleasant.

 But worse still is sitting down at the computer and staring at the beckoning cursor, unable to type, to move, for a very different reason: Too many ideas.

Yes, my friends, my head is a crowded, crowded place at the moment. 

You may be wondering what I’m whining about here.  I mean, since when is being an idea person construed as a bad thing?  Does anyone ever walk around thinking, ‘Better stay away from that one - They’re too creative!’  It just doesn’t happen.  Well, okay…I suppose it could if we were talking about a very creative killer.  That would be…unpleasant.

Anyway.  Think back to a time when you were at school or work, trying to focus on the task at hand, but your mind insisted on dwelling on some conversation from the weekend or upcoming plans that had you excited.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait for you to come back out of your reverie.

Welcome back.  So, you remember how annoying that was, right?  Now imagine your job was to sit down and be creative in a highly focused manner, about one single subject (in my case a particular book I’m writing), yet the characters from another book keep marching through your head like it’s Main Street and they’re in the parade.  So you ignore them.  You’re a professional so this should be a piece of cake.  Back you go to what you’re trying to focus on and then - POW!! - they start shooting each other and setting off bombs in your head.  (Don’t be scared.  My characters are usually in suspense/thrillers so I’m used to all the murder and mayhem.  If it needs to be Hello Kitty dropping her ice cream cone in the grass in your head then that’s okay too).

By this point, I imagine you can see the dilemma.  How can anyone be expected to concentrate on even the most bland of creative assignments with rocket launchers and ice creamless Hello Kitty going on?  It’s just not possible.  Toss in about ten more scenarios and welcome to my mind.

The truly ironic thing about this entire scenario is that I gladly would have killed Hello Kitty if I thought it would get the creative juices flowing at any point over the last four months or so.  I’d sit down to write, tell myself I was just going to play one hand of solitare to get my mind going and then waste the entire day playing cards.  Now, I’ve got so many plots racing through my mind that I’ll be lucky to get them all down in a year if I decided to skip sleep - on a permanent basis.  Crazy, right?

Well, if anyone’s got any great ideas for how to control the chaos in my head then I’d very much appreciate it.  Until tomorrow, Dark Passenger Jen…out.

No Hello Kitties were harmed during the creation of this blog…

As a writer I constantly find myself with too much to fill the too few hours of the day.  For example, I currently have four completed manuscripts in varying stages of revision, five outlined plots waiting to be written, three brand new novel ideas that have recently popped into my head and a few blogs.  When you take into account that I’m the lead singer and lead guitarist for Screamin’ Orgasms (yeah, that’s the name of the band I share with my hubby on Rock Band) and a recent Fable 2 addict, well, you can see my hands are full.  So you can imagine how hectic the month of November is going to be for me.

Wait.  What?  You don’t know what I mean?

Let me explain.  In addition to being the home of my most favorite holiday ever (Thanksgiving…mmm…yummy), November is also where two very important writing events collide.  NaNoWriMo aka National Novel Writing Month and NaBloPoMo aka National Blog Posting Month are both growing popularity.  Alone, they are each a worthy challenge.  Together…better start the coffee maker, peeps.

NaNoWriMo was created in 1999 to give those procrastinators we know and love known as authors the motivation to finally get to work on their novel.  The rules are simple: Begin work on November 1st, write until midnight November 30th and shoot for 50,000 words.  Sounds easy, right?  Yeah, that would be a negative.  You see, authors are also notorious for being perfectionists.  We will write and rewrite and then edit some more all the live-long day and have very little to show for our toils.  That sort of thing isn’t going to cut it when you consider you’ve got to write something like 1,200-1,300 words per day to stay on target.

NaBloPoMo, on the other hand, isn’t quite so bad.  The goal is simply to encourage bloggers to post more regularly.  It has been said that if you can do something every day for 30 days then you can do it daily for a lifetime.  I don’t know about that because I was great at stopping my workout regimen after a few months, but I don’t usually break a sweat while blogging so maybe there’s something to it in this case.  At any rate, the real challenge to a blog a day is that you don’t get to take a break on weekends.  The trouble with that is Hubby McHubberson doesn’t know I’m insane enough to sign up for something like this.

Scratch that.  He knows I’m crazy enough to do this; he doesn’t know I’m actually doing it this month.

In case anyone is interested in keeping up with my insanity levels during NaBloPoMo then you’re in the right place since http://darkpassenger.today.com is my official blog for the month of November - if not forever.

And if anyone out there is interested in keeping up with my NaNoWriMo madness then drop me a comment here to let me know.  I still haven’t decided if I’m willing share these 50,000 words as I go.  I mean, if I do this right, they’ll be 50,000 unedited and nonsensical words.  Who’d want to read that?  (Or does that just make it more appealing?)

Either way, it’s now that time when I need to end the blogging portion of my evening.  What’s that?  You want to know if it’s because I need to get back to the novel-writing part?  Hmm…I should…but South Park’s about to come on.  I’ve always got tomorrow to make up today’s 1,200 words.

See you tomorrow!