Something of my own in this ocean of words.

Writer's Block: Play it again, e-reader

bree_bee22 — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 04:41:03 GMT

The Picture of Dorian Gray. Why? Because it's fucking awesome, that's why. Undeniably sexy.

Also:

Pride and Prejudice.
Jane Eyre.
Wide Sargasso Sea.

Writer's Block: Sunday in the park with ____?

bree_bee22 — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:01:53 GMT

I am finding this really difficult to answer. Depending on what our day would consist of, I'd choose different characters to hand out with.

If it was going to be a romantic day at the lake or park or whatever, then probably Mr. Darcy.
If I was going to do all manner of terrible things and drink laudanum and smoke opium, then Dorian Gray.
If I was going to spend my day in the hospital, then I'd talk personal philosophies with Dr. Wilson.
If I was going to go human stalking, then Lestat de Lioncourt.
If I was going to go to a pretty coming out ball, I'd spend the day with Elizabeth Bennett.
If I was in need of ~~fashion advice~~ sex advice, Emmett Honeycutt would be my man. I'd try to hit on Brian Kinney when we run into him but Brian would reject me because he doesn't like girls XD
If I was working at Sterling Cooper, I'd hang out with the likes of Peggy Olson. (Or Peter Campbell *wink wink*)
And I know it sounds pretentious but if I had a chance to have drinks with or work with one of my own original fictional characters, it would be Miss Natalie Griffin :)

This is why I swear fiction is better than reality.

Writer's Hangout Prompt 12/12/09

bree_bee22 — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:47:53 GMT

So the Saturday prompt was to write something based off a song. I opened iTunes, put it on shuffle, and wrote about the first song that played. My prompt was Coldplay's Rainy Day, which you can listen to here. (Funny that this song was picked because it is currently raining outside.)

Title: Rainy Day
Author: Me
Rating: G/K
Warning: I basically just stuck with the story embedded in the song, so I don't even know if I can take full credit for this story, hah. I've been on a bit of a writing lull recently; my brain's too fried to come up with anything original just yet. It's also really cheesy and romantic; -shrug- I'm on a bit of a cheese splurge lately so let me be!

Rainy days were their favorites. It was currently 32 degrees Fahrenheit and outside the sky was gray, a thin mist covering the green, rolling hills.

All he could think about was her.

He smiled to himself and sat down at the piano, placing a well worn sheet of music on the ledge. Its corners were bent and the edges a brownish-yellow color from so much use.

This song was one he knew well, and he closed his eyes as he placed his fingers on the smooth, cool ivory and ebony keys. There was no need to have the sheet music in front of him but it made him feel better knowing it was there. Music in his own handwriting, a song he had composed some ten years ago.

The only song he'd ever composed.

Her song.

He titled his head back and let the music flow through him until he felt like he was floating in a world of colorful fog of brilliant yellows and lurid reds and shocking oranges. Soon there was an eruption of sounds and chords and beauty, the rain pounding on the windows outside acting as the percussion, keeping perfect, rhythmic time.

He played over and over again, never letting silence settle over the small, comfortable house. As long as he played, she would come to him.

"We're separated now, and I'm down, but I love it when you come over to my house. I love it when you come over to my house."

The words resounded in the air and mixed with the pulsating beat and the chords he played. Soon there was the heavy footstep of boots coming up the stairs followed by a terse, light knock.

The music didn't stop and he didn't move from the piano. Instead, his fingers continued to fly over the keys and the room continued to writhe with color and sound. There was the creak of the door as it opened and he turned his head slightly to the left just in time to see her long, lean figure standing in the doorway.

The smile that painted his face just then was the same one she once claimed she would die for.

"I love it when you come over to my house," he sang to her. "I love it when you come over to my house."

Writer's Block: Book worms unite!

bree_bee22 — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:18:23 GMT

This is going to be so difficult because there are a slew of books that I absolutely adore and a slew that I hate. But I'll try. In no particular order:

Best:

1. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. I'm a romantic at heart, and it just doesn't get any better than this. The plot might be cliche (and definitely overused by now) but it's a classic for a reason. I'm a sucker for Austen's wit and her characters (namely Elizabeth, Darcy, Jane, and Mr. Bingley). There's also the social commentary embedded within that has such powerful feminist ideas in the midst of all that prudish Victorian-ness that it makes me want to raise my fist and scream YEAH! I just love this book and I could read it over and over again. I have.

2. Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys. This I read for the first time in an English class I took last year; it's a sort of prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Everything about it is so beautiful, but what made me fall in love with it was the prose. You as a reader get a great inside look at a woman who is driven insane by her love for a man who does not love her back. The story is heartbreaking and tragic, and yet so incredibly lovely all at the same time. It's an easy read but it's complex; every time I pick this book up I'm instantly hooked from the first page on and I absolutely cannot put it down until I'm finished with it.

3. The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. I first read this by myself the summer after I graduated high school. I was so struck by the decadence of the novel and its, at the time, avant garde ideas on the purpose of art and the disintegration of one's soul. I became practically obsessed with it, and I actually felt stifled when I didn't have anyone to discuss the book with. So I put it away, pulling it out every now and then to read a passage. This year (my junior year in college) I signed up for a Victorian Literature class focusing on Decadent literature; this was one of the required reads. I signed up immediately. Once I read it again, I became even more obsessed with it. There is something so sinister and lovely about Dorian's descent into ugliness and crime, about how his soul is horrendous and yet he is the most beautiful man in the world on the surface; I find that the novel really speaks to readers because we all have this ugly side within us. This only novel of Wilde's seems to be a reflection of himself, as well. Too bad it was used against him in his trials. I would have loved to read more novels of his (but I've still got his great plays to read over and over again!).

*Honorable Mention: Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles. Sheer beauty woven into every word. I need say no more.

Worst:

1. The House of Night Series, by P.C. and Kristen Cast. I was introduced to these books by my friends, and I did not want to read them. I read them reluctantly, and it took me forever to read through them since I was so disinterested (I believe there are 5 novels released in the series so far and I had to stop reading after the 3rd). It hurts me to think that P.C. Cast is an actual creative writing teacher somewhere and that her daughter, Kristen, is an English major. Really. The novels are full of cliched characters that have absolutely no depth to them and who fall flat. The characters are stereotypical (the Mary Sue, the hick, the gay kid, the over-the-top black friend, the teacher pretending to be good but is really evil, etc. etc.) and the plots are predictable but manage to also be confusing and go absolutely nowhere. The writing is choppy and absolutely dreadful (imagine reading the word "hateful" every three words. Seriously. It's called a thesaurus! Use it wisely!), the dialogue is not funny when it is meant to be- actually, it's just eye-roll-worthy, and it's very easy to tell when there has been a switch in authors because there's no fluidity in the writing. Overall I can say that if you decide to read any of these books, you do so at your own peril, because these have GOT to be the worst books I've ever had the misfortune (and bad sense) of reading.

2. This Lullaby, by Sarah Dessen. Admittedly, it's nowhere near as horrendous as The House of Night, but it's still pretty bad. I'm beginning to think that all novels aimed at teenage girls or young women are all stereotypical and predictable. It makes me never want to touch one again (and then there's that ugly term I hate: "chick lit"). This one wasn't as boring, either, but I felt that Dessen just tried too hard. Her main character constantly reiterates how she's so cynical and such a bitch... yet she's always got boys falling all over for her. It doesn't make sense. The only vibrant character was the MC's love interest- whom she's not so interested in in the first place but ends up falling for- Dexter. He jumps off the pages. He is funny and exuberant, but that's the novel's only saving grace. And one other thing that really bothered me: all the women in the book drank nothing but diet coke or water. Seriously. Have a coke. It's not going to kill you if it's not diet! Way to perpetuate those confining ideologies that say beauty = skinny.

3. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy: A Novel: Two Shall Become One, by Sharon Lathan. I know that this book is the first of a series, but I can't remember the name of the series. In my defense, I did not spend my own money on this book- it was a gift. It's basically a published fanfiction of Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I've read other contemporary novels concerning Austen's characters so I wasn't too sad to receive this gift. Upon reading it, however... I had to stop at the third chapter because I just could not get through it. There are erotic scenes which take place which put me off- not that I have anything against erotica or anything, but it's just not the type of stuff I normally read. And it was hard for me to think of Darcy and Elizabeth as overt sexual beings. The novel takes place right after their marriage so I can see why the idea of sex would be important to the two of them, but when it came time to actually read the scene, I couldn't do it. It was so... purple. (You know, "it was a dark and stormy night...") It was actually hilarious in parts because it was just so cheesy (Elizabeth sighing Darcy's name over and over and over and saying, "William, my sweet love, don't stop" and he's whispering ridiculous things into her ear like, "We are one, my beloved. Joined together..." while they're doing the deed. I'll stop there because it's just too much. Those are actual lines from the book.) You'd think that after that you'd get to the actual story, but from what I've perused the entire novel is just about their sexual escapades together. So yeah, unless you're looking for ridiculous sexy scenes, stay away. The writing attempts to be Austen-esque and fails, because it just sounds ridiculous. And I can't take seriously an author who writes Pride and Prejudice fanfiction when she wasn't even aware of Austen or her novels or this story until after she saw the 2005 remake of P&P in theaters.

So that's me being a literature snob :)

Writer's Block: The play's the thing

bree_bee22 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:59:38 GMT

Easiest question ever. I would definitely replace Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice when Mr. Darcy proposes marriage to her while she's staying with the Collins'. This is such a passionate scene and so romantic. If it were a movie version I wouldn't object to either Matthew McFayden or Colin Firth as Darcy :)

"And this," cried Darcy, as he walked with quick steps across the room, "is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me! Thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps," added he, stopping in his walk, and turning towards her, "these offenses might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design..."

It would also be awesome to recreate the scene in The Picture of Dorian Gray when Lord Henry reveals to Dorian his potential, right before Dorian sells his soul. In this scene I'd be Lord Henry, because there's something sinisterly attractive in corruption, haha.

"Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals; the terror of God, which is the secret of religion- these are the two things that govern us... But the bravest man among us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and you should grow sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame---"