Two days ago in the bookstore, I spotted that same question on a book and I already knew that answer. The answer is something that in embedded in the nature of women.
Men are hunters. In centuries ago, men headed out and bagged whatever animal. An animal to feed and cloth their tribe until the next time. Whereas women, we went out and gathered. One piece of fruit wouldn't do nay, our ancestors filled their baskets.
Nowadays, men head out to hunt. They hunt for resources some money, ladies, cars and anything else. They play sports and all that other manly stuff that shows off their masculine wonderfulness.
As for us ladies, we gather, bags, lipstick, shoes. Gathering shoes or anything else answers to our primal need and desires. Us female species look for resources, the necessaries in life. In these times, resources are different.
And though, I love strawberries and spaghetti and I love shoes that make my legs look good, the perfect red lipstick and every other item in between. So Jimmy Choo and Blahnik and Louboutain, keep flowering for the seasons.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Female Friday
I first saw Katherine Hepburn in Philadelphia Story decades ago when TV had few channels and aired old black and white movie to fill up the channels. I watched her, in awe of her spunk, her confidence in herself and in the world around her. I thought wow I want to be a woman like that. I watched her movies, Bringing up Baby, African Queen, Lion in the Winter and On Golden Pond. I think I was the only 7 year old who watched that movie.
As I grew up and started figuring out how the world worked, my respect and awe of her grew. She donned pants when women were being escorted off the street even arrested. She had strong beliefs and spoken them never apologizing for her intelligence. And when her career tanked and she was considered box office poison, she turned her career around with the Philadelphia Story. I too wanted to have that strength and needed in my life when the life I knew and loved was shredded with my parents' divorce.
I needed Katherine more than ever. I watched her lined face hanging and liver-spotted, her hair tucked up, heard her scratchy, posh voice and watched her hands shake. She hadn't lost any of her spunk or intelligence. I never met her but she helped me decide on the woman I wanted to be. Katherine didn't follow the beat of her own drum, she created the music. My music sometimes skips or hits a horrid note but Katherine taught me to Write a new song.
As I grew up and started figuring out how the world worked, my respect and awe of her grew. She donned pants when women were being escorted off the street even arrested. She had strong beliefs and spoken them never apologizing for her intelligence. And when her career tanked and she was considered box office poison, she turned her career around with the Philadelphia Story. I too wanted to have that strength and needed in my life when the life I knew and loved was shredded with my parents' divorce.
I needed Katherine more than ever. I watched her lined face hanging and liver-spotted, her hair tucked up, heard her scratchy, posh voice and watched her hands shake. She hadn't lost any of her spunk or intelligence. I never met her but she helped me decide on the woman I wanted to be. Katherine didn't follow the beat of her own drum, she created the music. My music sometimes skips or hits a horrid note but Katherine taught me to Write a new song.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Ready, Set, Dress
RWA Nationals starts next Tuesday and I'm prepared. I have business cards and most importantly, my outfits are planned out and just waiting to be donned. I'll be posting my daily dress so check back for that. I'm only missing a pair of comfortable shoes. I have a few ideas but will have to wait for weekend to check out my choices.
As a writer, I generally spend my day in comfortable clothing, old t-shirts, shorts, pj bottoms, sweats basically college gear, which really helps with my body pains. Anyway, I'm ready to dress and waiting to go to my first Nationals. Too attend the workshops, meet Rachel Gibson, the author who inspired me to write romance, meet friends from Twitter and Facebook. I will be weak, tired, overwhelmed, excited, happy, inspired and I think two weeks will be needed to recover but that's fine.
This is a chance, an opportunity to mingle with a large crowd of romance writer, editors and agents. And I plan to dress for it in my personal style. And I'm hoping that it jolts up my confidence, has me feeling comfortable, stylish, professional, and ready to take on the world.
When was your chance to get closer to your dreams? Do you remember what you wore? How it made you feel?
As a writer, I generally spend my day in comfortable clothing, old t-shirts, shorts, pj bottoms, sweats basically college gear, which really helps with my body pains. Anyway, I'm ready to dress and waiting to go to my first Nationals. Too attend the workshops, meet Rachel Gibson, the author who inspired me to write romance, meet friends from Twitter and Facebook. I will be weak, tired, overwhelmed, excited, happy, inspired and I think two weeks will be needed to recover but that's fine.
This is a chance, an opportunity to mingle with a large crowd of romance writer, editors and agents. And I plan to dress for it in my personal style. And I'm hoping that it jolts up my confidence, has me feeling comfortable, stylish, professional, and ready to take on the world.
When was your chance to get closer to your dreams? Do you remember what you wore? How it made you feel?
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Wednesday Review
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| Amanda Foreman with her daughter |
Writer Eve MacSweeney writes a great article about Amanda. Eve peels back her layers to reveal the writer however preserving some of her privacy. The voice of the article is easy as if she wrote about a respectable and loved friend. Vogue has excellent writers to match their excellent content.
Besides being entertained as a Vogue reader, I learned a few things that tilted my outlook so my viewpoint on life is fresher and brighter and most certainly, less worried. How did all that happen in two and half pages?
The first lesson taught me more about character. Eve shows Amanda's life that balances work and family. Through this I see what is important to Amanda and can relate that to my characters. You can read what drives Amanda to write and her love of history and how she relates it to today's world. And why her childhood and life led her to having five children and what she pushed aside to do what is important to her.
Another lesson learned is the life of a writer. Sure she might be an award-winning writer whose biography turned into a movie. But one can relate to her. She wrote Georgiana for years, which was also her doctorate at Oxford. But you discover her passion. The passion needed to work on a book with no promise of success after all that's what all unpublished writers and some published writers face each time we sit down before our computers. She reinforced my belief to follow your heart's desires and not just with writing but with all that you desire, which for her was having a family.
Those are the lessons that fueled me. I'm revving to go. Good thing since I already started to follow them. I hope you do too. What are your passions? Please share with me.
Monday, June 6, 2011
There's No Crying in Baseball...
Tom Hanks's famous line from A League of Their Own may be true but emotions rear up at any time or place. And maybe tears aren't needed in baseball but emotions are required in stories especially romance novels. After all, love is the one emotion everyone chases after.
Thanks to another blog, I learned about the book, Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot: A Guide for Screenwriters written by Peter Dunne. Don't let screenwriter turn you novelist away. It works whatever your genre.
The books offers a great many lessons but the first one is about knowing your story.
He separates this lesson into two parts:
1. Plot
2. Story
Plot is what happens and not just what happens but what happens to the protagonist.
Go ahead and read that sentence again.
Plot is what happens and not just what happens but what happens to the protagonist.
So you have the witness to a murder or a business collapse, a divorce or anything else that is outside the Protagonist. Some call it the External Conflict. This is what propels the pro tag to act.
Onto number 2-- Story:
Story is what it does to the who it's happening to.
Read it again and let it sink in.
Story is what it (the plot) does to the who (protag) it's happening to.
So your witness now has to decide whether to go to the police or stay quiet. This plot is affecting him and his life.
These two parts are the units of a novel or script. And you can't have one without the other.
So, you merge these two parts.
Let's say our no-doubt-dashing hero and homicide detective, must find the murderer of the local football hero. The town where the murder occurred is hometown and as part of his job, he must notify the boy's mother and his high-school girlfriend who broke his heart when she married his best friend. He plans to act professional and friendly without the warmth or how he always behaves with her. That's his emotional defenses. He hides behind the badge and uses the distance to hide how much she hurt him.
When he arrives at her home, she throws herself into his arms and weeps. She tells him that she needs him. He promises to give his attention to finding her son's murder. But his ex won't give up, pulling at the emotion in him and so he tries a different way until he can get back to normal. Those skills he developed before have failed him.
Then something else happens. Let's say, the victim is his son. So he has to use another tactic, use another skill to get back to his normal. Then something else happens and the protag must react and this repeats to the end of story and each time, he learns a new tool by reacting in a new way until his weakness is exposed. He might be unaware of the exposed weakness but he must change or fail.
This leads to our story's climax when the character learns something. Here the emotion has to change because the hero has broken down his walls. Now he's a better healed person for it.
Thanks to another blog, I learned about the book, Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot: A Guide for Screenwriters written by Peter Dunne. Don't let screenwriter turn you novelist away. It works whatever your genre.
The books offers a great many lessons but the first one is about knowing your story.
He separates this lesson into two parts:
1. Plot
2. Story
Plot is what happens and not just what happens but what happens to the protagonist.
Go ahead and read that sentence again.
Plot is what happens and not just what happens but what happens to the protagonist.
So you have the witness to a murder or a business collapse, a divorce or anything else that is outside the Protagonist. Some call it the External Conflict. This is what propels the pro tag to act.
Onto number 2-- Story:
Story is what it does to the who it's happening to.
Read it again and let it sink in.
Story is what it (the plot) does to the who (protag) it's happening to.
So your witness now has to decide whether to go to the police or stay quiet. This plot is affecting him and his life.
These two parts are the units of a novel or script. And you can't have one without the other.
So, you merge these two parts.
Let's say our no-doubt-dashing hero and homicide detective, must find the murderer of the local football hero. The town where the murder occurred is hometown and as part of his job, he must notify the boy's mother and his high-school girlfriend who broke his heart when she married his best friend. He plans to act professional and friendly without the warmth or how he always behaves with her. That's his emotional defenses. He hides behind the badge and uses the distance to hide how much she hurt him.
When he arrives at her home, she throws herself into his arms and weeps. She tells him that she needs him. He promises to give his attention to finding her son's murder. But his ex won't give up, pulling at the emotion in him and so he tries a different way until he can get back to normal. Those skills he developed before have failed him.
Then something else happens. Let's say, the victim is his son. So he has to use another tactic, use another skill to get back to his normal. Then something else happens and the protag must react and this repeats to the end of story and each time, he learns a new tool by reacting in a new way until his weakness is exposed. He might be unaware of the exposed weakness but he must change or fail.
This leads to our story's climax when the character learns something. Here the emotion has to change because the hero has broken down his walls. Now he's a better healed person for it.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Female Friday
With the tornadoes carving a path of destruction in the Untied States and with the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War, only one female deserve to be remembered on Female Friday: Clara Barton.
On Christmas Day in 1821 in Oxford, Massachusetts, Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born. Clara as she became know was one of five children. At 11, she received her first patient, her brother David. For three years she cared for him and that started her life in nursing.
Almost three decades later, her nursing skills helped the men fighting against their brothers in war. Nine days after the start of the Civil War, Clara tended the soldiers quartered in the US Senate chamber in Washington. She was dedicated to these injured men so much so that after the first Battle of Bull Run, she established a main agency to obtain and distribute supplies. Even that wasn't good enough for her. She was then given a pass to ride in army ambulances to provide comfort and nurse the injured back to health.
With the end of the war, in 1865, President Lincoln placed her in charge of the search for missing union men. A daunting task but one she gave her all to. As luck would have it, a young soldier named Dorence Atwater came to her. He had a list of 13,000 deceased Union men. Atwater had carried this precious list through his time in the Andersonville prison. The list became known as The Atwater List as Clara Barton named it in her official reports. Both Atwater and Burton sent 42 headboard carvers to Andersonville and became known as the Angels of Andersonville, which was her second nickname. The first was The Angel of the Battlefield.
She became a celebrity in her time with her lectures seen by the populace, meeting with Susan B. Anthony on Women's rights and as well as Fredrick Douglas about Black's rights. In 1869, she learned about the Red Cross and Henry Dumant's Book, A Memory of Solferino, during her trip to Geneva.
On May 21, 1881 in Dansville, New York, Clara became the president and founder of the American branch of the Red Cross or the American Red Cross. To continue helping people in need, she sailed to Istanbul and opened the first American International Red Cross. Her works continued in Armenia as well as hospitals in Cuba. Needing funds to continue her works, she teamed up the New York World Newspaper to accept contributions for relief efforts. Nowadays, we text in our donations. Her last field operation was the relief effort for the victims of the Galveston Hurricane, the deadliest in US history in September 1900. She resigned four years later at age of 83.
On April 12, 1912 at the age of 90, she died in Glen Echo, Maryland, which is also the location of the Clara Barton National Historic Site.
The Red Cross still serves this nation in every tragedy we have suffered. And it's one of the greatest services this nation has. Not to preach but if you can give $1 or 5, or whatever you can, please do and help people get back to their normal lives. And if you did as an American, I thank you.
On Christmas Day in 1821 in Oxford, Massachusetts, Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born. Clara as she became know was one of five children. At 11, she received her first patient, her brother David. For three years she cared for him and that started her life in nursing.
Almost three decades later, her nursing skills helped the men fighting against their brothers in war. Nine days after the start of the Civil War, Clara tended the soldiers quartered in the US Senate chamber in Washington. She was dedicated to these injured men so much so that after the first Battle of Bull Run, she established a main agency to obtain and distribute supplies. Even that wasn't good enough for her. She was then given a pass to ride in army ambulances to provide comfort and nurse the injured back to health.
With the end of the war, in 1865, President Lincoln placed her in charge of the search for missing union men. A daunting task but one she gave her all to. As luck would have it, a young soldier named Dorence Atwater came to her. He had a list of 13,000 deceased Union men. Atwater had carried this precious list through his time in the Andersonville prison. The list became known as The Atwater List as Clara Barton named it in her official reports. Both Atwater and Burton sent 42 headboard carvers to Andersonville and became known as the Angels of Andersonville, which was her second nickname. The first was The Angel of the Battlefield.
On May 21, 1881 in Dansville, New York, Clara became the president and founder of the American branch of the Red Cross or the American Red Cross. To continue helping people in need, she sailed to Istanbul and opened the first American International Red Cross. Her works continued in Armenia as well as hospitals in Cuba. Needing funds to continue her works, she teamed up the New York World Newspaper to accept contributions for relief efforts. Nowadays, we text in our donations. Her last field operation was the relief effort for the victims of the Galveston Hurricane, the deadliest in US history in September 1900. She resigned four years later at age of 83.
The Red Cross still serves this nation in every tragedy we have suffered. And it's one of the greatest services this nation has. Not to preach but if you can give $1 or 5, or whatever you can, please do and help people get back to their normal lives. And if you did as an American, I thank you.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
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