Easy Isn’t Always Better

Let’s face it.  We’re creatures of habit.  Humans have a way of gravitating toward what feels most natural: what they know.

I’m that way.  Easier is… well… easy. 

But easy doesn’t mean it’s always the best option.  I’ve learned that the hard way.  And on multiple occasions.  The times of my life that I remember the most, the moments that changed me for good have been the times that were hard. 

Here's my story.

 I grew up in Colorado.  I wasn’t really an adventurer.  I preferred to stay home with a good book rather than go out and do something new.  My plan for my life was to get a nursing degree at a university near home, with my cousin as a roommate.  From there, I planned on living my life without any excitement and without any difficulties.

I would have been perfectly content with a life like that.  No fuss, no injuries.  But who’d want to read about that?

As a senior in high school, I received a pamphlet for Saint Louis University’s Madrid Campus.   It had an opportunity to obtain a bachelor’s degree in nursing from both the United States and Spain.  The thought both intrigued and terrified me.  I won’t go into the details, but after a year of debating, dealing with the fear of the unknown, I moved to Spain.

In the two years I lived in Madrid, I experienced things that I’d never dreamed of.  I learned a new language, I traveled to Germany, I met a handsome Bolivian and brought him back to the US where we got married.  I even learned how to dance.  Each experience is one that I treasure, and the person that I became is who I am today. 

Castle Manzanares El Real

Symbol of Madrid

Segovia

As a writer, I search for those moments that take my characters out of their comfort levels.  I want them to struggle, to learn, and to grow.  Because ultimately, that’s the story that I would want to read. 

How about you?  Have there been moments when you stepped out of your comfort zone and experienced something new?

Romance in Literature

Last week, I decided to watch a movie from my childhood, The Swan Princess.  This movie brings back fond memories of growing up, singing the songs and spending time with my family.  In fact, while watching the movie, I spent the first ten to fifteen minutes quoting the entire thing.  And I definitely sang all of the songs without difficulty. 

However, as I was watching, I started thinking about the kind of ideas that this movie gives children.  And when I say ideas, I mean specifically describing romance and creating expectations. 

I loved romance as a kid.  Movies, books, etc.  That was my favorite genre.  And The Swan Princess was one of my favorites.  Derek goes to extraordinary lengths to prove his love to Odette, and even when he knows he’s lost, he keeps fighting.  It’s a story of true love, or what I assumed was true love.  But as I started watching, I was a little surprised by how forced the romance felt. 

Derek and Odette spend their entire lives forced together, but hating each other.  While watching, my husband tried to guess their ages as they grew up, and said something along the fact that Derek probably noticed that he had feelings for Odette when she was flirting ‘with the castle guards.’  But he didn’t really realize what he was feeling until that moment when she was pushed in the room, all grown up and stunning.  That’s actually quite common in romantic shows, that a man doesn’t realize that he’s in love until the woman appears dressed up and beautiful.

Over the years, I’ve adjusted my idea of what true love is.  When I was in high school, I worked at a retirement home where I became friends with quite a few of the residents there.  There was one couple that became my hallmark for ‘true love.’  He lost a leg in war and had to ride around in a wheelchair.  She had more health problems and was on continuous oxygen.  But together, they were able to function as one.  She pushed his wheelchair while he held her purse, and her oxygen hung on the back of his chair.  Every night, they split a fruit plate for dessert. 

Then, I fell in love myself.  It did take me quite a while to realize that I was in love, especially since it started as friendship.  But what surprised me the most was that my husband never made a grand gesture to prove his love.  He didn’t fight a ‘great animal,’ he never raced across an airport to profess his love, and he never offered himself a sacrifice to save my life.  What he did do was become a constant in my life, someone who I could talk to about anything, someone who never judged me for who I was. 

He didn’t fall in love with me because of the way that I dress, or because I wore a lot of makeup, but because of who I was.  He was impressed with my piano playing, my attempt to learn Spanish, my aptitude for learning.  And I fell in love with his easygoing nature, his dependability and his adaptability.

Love isn’t always a grand gesture like shown in the movies.  Sometimes it’s something as small as supporting one another’s weaknesses, whether it be physical or emotional.  And that’s something I look for now when I read romances.  Difficulties due to lack of communication and lies tend to leave me cold.  I want to read more natural romances, where it builds slow and strong, not to be broken by a simple arguments and clashes in personalities.

How about you?  What kind of romance do you look for in literature?

Practice, Practice, Practice

I’ve been writing for a while.  My first ‘official’ novel was written in high school, once I finally figured out the value of outlining and preplanning.  It took me almost three months to write, but I was incredibly proud of myself.  After two or three ‘drafts’ of that novel, which consisted of mostly just fixing the spelling, I moved to my second novel, though that one was never finished. 

When I got to college, I left all of my writing at home and focused on ‘real life’ until I realized that the more I ignored my writing, the harder it was for me to focus on my studies.  And nursing is not a field that you don’t want to be able to focus in.  My Junior year, I went back home, grabbed my binders and started reading through that first novel that I’d written.  To my surprise, it was awful.  Terrible.  I cringed at how juvenile it sounded. 

I spent most of my Junior year, and the summer after revising the novel.  I made some pretty substantial chances, and it ended up with 35,000 more words and a much more satisfying ending.  But it still didn’t feel like enough.  So I went back and revised that.  And then I revised again.  I read books on how to write, and I began to branch out, explore on the internet to see what was available.  I found critique partners who were willing to work with me, despite my inexperience. 

After a year of revising that first novel, another idea came to my mind.  I tried to follow the same procedure, using months to plan and prepare, but this story took me by surprise and after just a week of planning, I wrote the entire novel during the last month of my Senior year.  I was amazed by how much better this novel was than the first one.  It’s not me bragging, I had just learned enough skills that this draft was almost to par with draft number 4 or 5 of the first novel.

I’ve found, after years and years of writing, that I’m a reviser at heart.  I don’t mind taking my novels and tearing them apart, just as long as I know that it will be better.  I just finished a major revision of my Blue WIP, probably one of the only ones where I was dissatisfied with how it turned out after I finished the first draft. 

Now that I’ve finished with that revision, I went back to my NaNo novel, ready to tear it apart.  Last week, I went through the entire thing, doing a quick read to decide what major changes needed to be made.  To my surprise, this novel was solid.  Yes, there will be revisions, but nothing as drastic as the first 4 novels that I’d written.  The practice, and the dedication that I’d shown to my writing had finally started to show.

Growing up, I took piano lessons.  And I believe that I had some talent.  But years and years of half-practicing and not dedicating myself to the craft has decreased that talent somewhat.  At least, that’s how I feel.  Now that I live on my own, and now that I understand the value of practice, I actually have improved much more than I did when I took lessons.  It’s just a matter of focusing and practicing on a regular basis.

Picture taken by me

Writing is the same way.  No matter how much talent a person has, there’s always something more to learn.  I heard once that the first million words are just practice.  As I went through all of the novels, half-novels and rewrites that I’d done, I realized how much that’s true.  My NaNo novel was probably the novel where I surpassed that number.  (If not before). 

Does that mean I’m done?  Everything I write will be gold?  Not in the least.  But it does mean that I’ve learned, I’ve improved and I’m going to keep improving.

Fairy Tales and Childhood

Last week, my husband and I went to see Frozen.  I am a huge Disney fan, and when I saw the trailer, I was incredibly excited, especially when I found out that it was based off of the story of the Ice Queen.  I was curious to see how they would do it, especially since it didn’t look like they were following the main plot points as much as they usually did.

To say I was pleasantly surprised is an understatement.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I loved the small twists that gave a nod to Han Christen Anderson’s original.  I won’t mention them here, just to prevent spoilers. 

One of the things that I love to do, especially when I read/watch something that I really enjoy, is to go online and read others’ reviews on the topic.  Usually I don’t post my own, but I like to see both sides of the story.  And for some reason, I like to read the negative reviews, to see what sections were a bit less satisfying for others. 

What surprised me the most about these negative reviews were two things: One it was considered a ‘good effort,’ but nowhere up to par with the Disney classics like Lion King or Little Mermaid.  The other complaint was that the score was less than thrilling with ‘forgettable’ songs, except for one.  And if you’ve seen the movie, you know which one they’re talking about.

So I’ve been thinking about that quite a bit recently.  What made those Disney movies classics?  How is it that most of the new movies are considered subpar when compared to them?  Is it the animation?  Is it the music? 

As I was thinking about this, I talked to one of my sisters about it, and how much I enjoyed it.  I began mentioning that the story meant so much more to me because I loved the story of the Snow Queen, and I loved seeing it expanded in the way that it was.  She mentioned to me that maybe I enjoyed it so much because I knew the story.  I was already familiar with the characters – to a specific point.  That’s one of the things that Disney is most famous for.  They take classics that everyone has grown up with – Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and give it a new spin.

Why is there such a surge in fairy tales in the movies?  Yes, I’m sure it has something to do with copyrights, but I think it also has to do with the fact that fairy tales are almost universally a part of everyone’s childhood.  It touches them in ways that perhaps a new story won’t.  How many people read a classic from their childhood and immediately get a flood of nostalgia?  I think that’s one of the reasons that the Polar Express and Where the Wild Things Are became movies.  Not because they were that long or good of stories, but because they touched the viewers in a way that a new story might not have.

So when I see critics of Frozen, I wonder how many of them know the actual fairy tale.  It’s not as common as a story like Beauty and the Beast, or even Rapunzel.  I think Rapunzel received much higher praise, just because it was a well-known fairy tale with a unique twist.

Now, for the second question, I’d like to take this just a bit further.  The songs were heard by critics, aka adults.  How many of those adults, comparing the score to classics from the Lion King, were children when watching those classics?  I went back and compared the music.  I know that this is all very subjective, but I think that if the Lion King were to come out for the first time, it wouldn’t be as well received by our critics as it was back then.  Those songs aren’t just a representation of ‘good music,’ but they’re also a representation of our childhood – a time that seemed simpler, when things were happier.  So how could anything else compare? 

But when we look at these movies – for children – with the eyes of children, something surprising may occur.  This isn’t our childhood anymore, but it is theirs.  In ten year from now, I’m almost positive that songs from Frozen, Tangled, and all the movies coming out will be considered the ‘classics.’  While the songs that we grew up with will be considered ‘old.’  In fact, I’ve already seen that happen with some children that I’ve worked with recently.  

What do you think?