Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

in honor of one of the greatest authors of our time, here are some quotes. most are from his books, but one or two might be from an interview or speech. i'm not sure which.

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.



Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.
 
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.  


You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.

I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind.
Some come from ahead and some come from behind.
But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see.
Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!
In the places I go there are things that I see
That I never could spell if I stopped with the Z.
I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends.
My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!

Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So... get on your way.

reminders

nothing like posting
pictures of your characters
to get you motivated to write.

read my book, but don't look at me

saw this on facebook. so very true. 

how one thing can change everything

perusing blogs this morning, i came across a post on Alex's blog by Stephen Tremp about low-budget movies. the first one listed was American Graffiti. which made me think of George Lucas.

we have discussions about George here at the Gregory house on a regular basis. we're not always happy with his creative decisions, but we do give him credit for changing the movie landscape over the last 30 years. and we don't really talk about how Star Wars has invaded our culture with terms like "may the Force by with you" and "I have a bad feeling about this."

our discussions center more around the results of one man's vision for a story. we're referring to a special effects company called Industrial Light and Magic.

"Lucas created the company (in 1975) when he discovered that the special effects department at 20th Century Fox was shut down after he was given the green light for his production of the film Star Wars."

"They have since gone on to produce special effects for nearly three hundred films, including the entire Star Wars saga, The Abyss, the Indiana Jones series, the Harry Potter franchise, the Jurassic Park franchise, the Back to the Future trilogy, many of the Star Trek films, Ghostbusters II, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the entireTerminator sequels, the Transformers films, the Men in Black series, most of the Mission: Impossible films, and also provided work for Avatar, alongside Weta Digital."

(to see more: ILM filmography)

"John Lasseter worked for ILM in the early 1980s as a computer animator. The computer graphics division, now known as Pixar, was eventually sold to Steve Jobs, and went on to create the first CG animated feature with Toy Story."

they've also done a lot of firsts:
-- first completely computer-generated characters
-- first completely computer-generated sequence
-- first morphing
-- first cg hair and skin
-- first i-mocap (motion capture)

in my opinion, without their ground-breaking technology, we probably wouldn't have effects houses like Weta.

though we may never have the influence George has, maybe our stories will influence one person who will go on to influence the world. you just never know.

keep writing.

(all information was taken from Wookieepedia.com)

2 blogging awards

Rachel Mary Bean of Writing on the Wall gifted me with two blogging awards. now i get to list 10 random things about me and pass these on. let me see if i can list things i haven't listed before...

1. i was in speech and debate in high school. most nerve wracking class i ever had.

2. i celebrate 4 major holidays/events in the space of a week-- Christmas, birthday, New Years, and my anniversary. obviously the birthday i couldn't help, but what was i thinking getting married on January 2nd? oh yeah...i'd just graduated from college and i was tired of waiting.

3. i'm a fan of Steven Waddington on facebook. some of the people there know him. i've mentioned i wrote a novel using him as a main character. if he ever says anything i'll freak. at the same time, something in me wants to meet him. that would probably make me freak too.

4. i used to live in Mesa, AZ. Mesa is Spanish for flat-topped hill. i moved to Butte, MT. a butte is a flat-topped hill (and is pronounced like the beaut in beautiful). God has a sense of humor.

5. i also moved from one desert to another. this one is just colder.

6. i told my kids that when it got to 20 below here (which it hasn't yet), they could remind me how much i hated the heat in the Phoenix area. last summer it got up to 118.

7. my middle name is Denise.

8. my maiden name is Engbretson. none of my teachers could pronounce it right on my first day in their class. at least it wasn't Trzbiatowksi (that's Treb-uh-TUH-skee).

9. i know a Trzbiatowski family in Wisconsin.

10. i was very happy to marry a Gregory. 

i'm not sure how many people to pass this onto, and i don't remember who i've given an award to, and who i haven't, but here goes. (and as a note, i hate leaving people out, and i knew i couldn't list every blog i visit, but i think you're all great.)

Wake up, eat, sleep, write (what a great name for a blog)
Winded Words
The Bookshelf Muse
Tasha Seegmiller
Alex J. Cavanaugh
Wordstream

creatures of the forest

with my wild imagination, i can see a fairy or troll emerging from here. i'll have to be careful when i go walking in the woods around my future house. 

silly me

if you were a fantasy writer, and you'd based your fantasy country on a real country (mostly the shape of it, not so much the landscape, weather, etc), and you'd had two visitors from the real country come to your blog, what would your writer mind think? mine feels like i've had two blog visitors from my fantasy country.

i know. silly me.

Insecure Writers - remembering C. S. Lewis

as i struggle with writing the current draft of my novel, i want to remember the wisdom of C. S. Lewis. so here, (not brilliantly written, but from my heart), are my struggles and his answers...

-- it's just an idea i had. what's so great about it?

"The Lion all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: 'Let's try to make a story about it.'"

and aren't we glad he followed up on the picture in his head.

-- i might like it, but will anyone else like it?

“Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.”

-- it's not a very original story

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."

-- maybe it's all garbage

"What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn't matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it's thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on."

-- what if i'm not including enough description?

(this is just my own observation) no book in the Chronicles of Narnia is over 300 pages, if that, and they're small books, not heavy tomes. his description is sparse, yet our minds fill in this wonderful world. maybe better to not over-describe, but let our readers fill in the blanks.

-- this is taking forever/will it ever be done?

"Although Lewis originally conceived what would become The Chronicles of Narnia in 1939, he did not finish writing the first book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe until 1949." (from Wikipedia)

whew. that makes me feel better.

and when it all gets to be too much, time for tea and a book.

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”

in good company

"The Lion all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: 'Let's try to make a story about it." - C. S. Lewis

i love it.

what did your story begin with? mine was a story for my kids.