My Favorite Summer Song

Cleaning out the basement and the garage today, and just thought I would share my favorite summer song ever. It's a Japanese 'golden oldie' from the 70's ! Miki Hirayama is the singer, and I found it thanks to my all-time favorite Japanese movie-- Adrenaline Drive. There's just nothing better than a movie about two shy young people who steal some gangsters' money, then overcome their shy natures and fall in love while on the run!

Imagine the bumbling gangsters, packed into a tiny, tiny car, chasing the couple... then they turn on the radio and start singing along to this tune.

OK, you don't have to imagine because I just found that on youtube as well.



And for those of you who thought the main 'good guy' in the back of the truck looked familiar... he is Masanobu Ando, of Battle Royale (and a lot of other movies) fame. I love that guy-- seriously the Japanese Johnny Depp.

That's it for today... sorry about the lack of writing relevance, but I thought everyone needed to enjoy my FAVORITE SUMMER SONG!

Slutty New Idea......

Yep. The dreaded (but seductive) Slutty New Idea. I've got one, and it's driving me completely, totally batty. So batty, in fact, that I had to put down my tools at work last week and spend 2 hours scribbling it all out in pencil on a series of post-it notes.

I know, it's been ages since I've been here, and you probably think, "She's ignored her blog for so long that she must have gotten a huge amount of editing done in the meantime... a few hours on a Slutty New Idea can't hurt!" Ummm............no? In fact, I haven't edited a single word in the last month thanks to a sniveling little voice in my head telling me that the editing is just too much-- too much of a tangle, too much work, too overwhelming, too difficult. Yet that same little voice is telling me that this lovely little new idea would be sooo easy. I should just quit agonizing over every word of Old WIP, it tells me, and work on New Idea for a while.

Sigh......

I really want to work on the new one because it's fun and it's a good, fully-formed idea, but then I feel guilty, horribly horribly guilty. Oh, my poor Old WIP, bandaged and sitting in the corner, wondering why I don't love it anymore. Oh, my poor readers who have stuck with me and Old WIP over so many incarnations...don't they deserve some resolution? Don't they deserve a complete story with a proper ending after reading my revisions a million times? Hell, don't I deserve a complete story with a proper ending after writing a million revisions?

Sigh...... but Slutty New Idea is just so pretty....

OK. The guilt level has just bested the appeal of the slutty new idea.
I'm gonna go try to change the bandages on Old WIP again. Maybe this time it will quit festering!

Speaking of Egg Salad Sandwiches...

...and I'm totally not joking: I am in the Land of the Egg Salad Sandwich right now. Seriously, NO ONE makes an egg salad sandwich like a Japanese convenience store. You've never had eggs so perfectly cooked, mayo so creamy, or bread so fluffy. And it's from a convenience store, which means when you're drunk and walking home at 3AM, you can stop and get the world's best sandwich!

For those of us used to filthy, horrible, American convenience stores, the Japanese 'Konbini' is like heaven. And those egg salad sandwiches...

Sorry, I promise I'll quit talking about them and give you guys a real post soon :-)

Gonna see YokohamaMama on Tuesday, too!

A Lovely Egg Salad Sandwich

First, I must tell you about an amazing contest over at Editorial Ass! Moonrat is celebrating the 500,000th blogviewing, by giving away a 20-page critique of your WIP! Go there! Now!

OK, back to my post...

I have this little joke that I make, about an egg salad sandwich. I think it is the height of hilarity, but then I remember that no one really has any idea what I'm talking about or why I'm cracking up. The problem is, it's an inside joke-- one that came about from a real circumstance, got blown up into a joke among friends, and then I forget that not everyone was there. And without the backstory, it just isn't as funny.

(Keep in mind that this may actually be funnier if you were there...)
One day, many years ago, hubby Matt was telling someone about the egg salad sandwich he ate for lunch. It wasn't exciting, it wasn't anything special, and he was as bored talking about it as the other person was listening to him prattle on about egg salad sandwiches. So he stopped. In the middle of the sentence, he just stopped and wondered out loud why the @#)! he was talking about egg salad sandwiches. The other person agreed.

So these days, whenever someone is talking our ears off about THE most boring subject ever, we just say, "I had an egg salad sandwich..." (and sometimes we mention the creamy mayonnaise, or the fluffy bread, or another boring detail)
Hilarious to us, but probably confusing to others.
I do have to congratulate Valerie Geary for getting the joke when I used it to describe my feelings toward most Twitter posts, but for the most part, it confuses people.
Which brings me to my writing-related point: making sure there is nothing in my WIP that is an inside joke.
When you cut and paste and rework and rewrite as much as we all do, a lot of wordy backstory gets edited out. BUT BEWARE! If you cut all that backstory, you may do it at the expense of clarity. This is probably the best reason to use Betas (or at least have other eyes reading your WIP), because they can spot things you can't-- namely, when you've removed a chunk of backstory which has left your character doing something that doesn't make sense. You don't notice it yourself because it is like the egg salad sandwich. You have all the context and backstory in your head, but remember, your reader wasn't there. So drop the inside jokes! Or for crying out loud, at least explain them!

Art that Makes Me Wanna Write a Book!

Yes, it's finally time for another installment of Art that Makes Ann Wanna Write a Book!
It seems to be the only thing I get around to blogging about these days, but I feel some 'real' blog posts coming soon! I am going to be hanging out with YokohamaMama in the land of the rising sun next week, and two sisters+cherry blossom festivals= a good, old-fashioned blog post!

So anyway... This week's art is from Lani Imre, an artist originally from British Columbia, Canada. Her work makes me think 'book covers'. I see so much emotion in the eyes of her painted characters-- it really could fill a book!



And while much of the art I have previously posted is of a specific scene, and I spend time daydreaming about that scene and the story on either side of it... Lani's characters are solitary, lonely, almost existing in a vacuum.
There are no clues about what is happening to them, and yet it makes me yearn to know who they are... and that makes me wanna write a book!

No, really! I have an excuse this time!

Seriously! I got a really great commission to do a jewelry piece for a talented celebrity that I love, I had Japanese houseguests for two-and-a-half weeks, and then I got diagnosed with asthma! Yah, see, Matt and I were going on this short bike ride, and when I coughed and wheezed for 8 hours afterwards, I decided it was time to talk to the doctor, and... wait, you're not listening anymore, are you?
Your eyes glazed over after the first excuse? Really? All these years, I thought the excuses were working... turns out you're just thinking about texting your other friend who wants to go out for drinks later.
OK, fine, so I don't really have a good excuse, other than the fact that I am easily distracted at times. It has been a good month since I really focused on my blog, and at least two weeks since I really dug in on my WIP.
I defer to Laini Taylor's great post on this subject. Also my sister's post, which proves that we are eerily identical despite being 3 years (and several thousand miles) apart. Turns out I'm not the only one struggling with keeping my focus, and the fact that I'm not alone in this... thank goodness.
And thank goodness for my inhaler, which will allow me to contemplate a more active lifestyle for the first time in my life. (Notice I said 'contemplate'-- we're not committing to anything here!) Still, it will be nice to be able to actually complete a bike ride!

I just have one question: where can I get an inhaler for writing? You know, so I can finally complete this manuscript?

Art that Makes Me Wanna Write a Book!

Hello again, here is this weekend's installment of 'art that makes me wanna write a book', even though I didn't get it posted on Saturday.... (houseguests. you know how that goes.)

Anyway, today's art is by one of my favorite Japanese artists, Shohei. I've posted his work before, and talked about his famous animator father, and his colorblindness, and I'm still blown away by the fact that he uses only ball-point pen to draw....

Yah. It's sort of shocking to see someone draw like that with a ball-point pen....

Which leads me to one of my favorite pieces by him: "Ping-Pong Geisha"


I love the movement, the playfulness, the details... She's so modern and so traditional all at the same time. I want to know why she wears sunglasses and who put a lock around her waist. I want to know why she plays ping-pong instead of practicing shamisen or dance. I want to know who the person on the other side of the table is. Maybe she is being controlled by a gangster... maybe she is sick of being a geisha and is breaking free.... So many possibilities and story ideas come to mind!

Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!