Royal Wedding...again...

Well I got up on Friday morning and watched some bits of the royal wedding on YouTube. It was pretty awesome. Kate was so pretty and the dress was perfect. They looked fabulous and the whole thing went off without a hitch...except theirs of course...they got hitched! Now we just have to wait for them to make some beautiful babies!!!!

Other than that, nothing very eventful has happened. I didn't do much all weekend but now I'm going to try to send out some more query letters to agents today.

Royal Wedding and Screeplay Progress

Ok, so the Royal wedding is on Friday. That would be two AM on Friday if you're on the west coast of the US like I am. And I am in a dilemma. The wedding will be broadcast live here starting at 2 AM and part of me wants to stay up all night to watch it. I am unemployed with nothing to do the next day so I could sleep all day. This will likely be the biggest wedding in my lifetime except my own of course :P and I LOVE weddings so I would love to be able to say that I watched it live. But on the flip side, I know that Aaron would think it was absolutely ridiculous to stay up just to watch someone else's wedding and in a way he is right. The wedding doesn't concern me at all, I just think it's kind of cool. So I would like to do it but I also feel kind of stupid staying up to watch it. So, I can't decide what to do...

The screenplay is coming along well.  I had a couple of issues which I have more or less worked out.  The book, Rilla of Ingleside, is full of both letters between Rilla and her brothers that are serving overseas, and diary entries by Rilla. In an effort to maintain the feel of the book as well as convey the innermost feelings of Rilla which would be difficult to put in a movie without some voice over, I have put pieces of Rilla's diary entries into the screenplay. The form that they took were visually just Rilla writing in the diary, with her voice reading the entry in a voice over. But I was unsatisfied with this. It seemed boring and lazy but I couldn't think of a way around them. So then a couple of nights ago, I was watching the French film "A Very Long Engagement" which also takes place during and after World War I and in there, she reads letters aloud with voice over but the visuals show clips of what the voice over is talking about. So there is something for the audience to watch as well as listen to. So I've decided to do something similar with Rilla's diary entries and her letters from her brothers.  The voice over is necessary both for the feel of the book and to convey emotions and explanations but this makes it less lazy and boring than without any visuals. The only issue I'm having is that I'm not sure how to format it, whether the descriptions should come before all the voice over, or after or interspersed in where it is relevant. I think that I'm leaning towards interspersed it in. 

The second issue I had was that screenplays are supposed to be written in Courier font. However, Microsoft Word 2010 doesn't have Courier as a font, only Courier New. I did some reading online and found that although it is acceptable, Courier New takes up more space on the page than Courier and since I need all the space I can get out of my 120 page allotment, I downloaded Courier and switched the document over. It saved me about six pages so I'm still at just 100 pages now. But it is nice to have the extra leeway.

Other than that, I'm just enjoying not having to work and just puttering away at the screenplay. I'm also brainstorming for another novel since I want to write one after I finish Rilla, My Rilla (the screenplay) before I go back to work and/or school. I fill you in on some of my thoughts for that later.

Snow days!

So the snow yesterday just kept coming down all day and most of the night.  In the end, it iced over really bad over night and now the roads in Seattle are a slick mess of solid ice and snow.  Buses are literally sliding off the road all over the city and although it is a beautiful sunny morning out there today, the temperature stands at a frigid 22 degrees and it's not supposed to warm up at all.  So I called my work, which is most of the way across the city from where I live, and told them that I didn't think I could make it in.  Two years ago we had a bad snow and I worked a 12 to 6 shift at the Lower Queen Anne Blockbuster.  I was able to get to work ok, but then the buses stopped running and I was stranded and unable to get home.  The taxis wouldn't go out to Ballard where I was living either.  So this year I didn't want that to happen again, so the long and the short of it is, I have a SNOW DAY!!!! I feel like a school kid again, although I was home schooled but we did get snow days sometimes even so just to play in the snow and stuff.

But I promised myself when I woke up this morning that if it was a snow day, I would do some serious work on my poor, neglected novel.  So that is the plan for today.

Also, on a side note, Prince William and Kate Middleton announced that they will be married on April 29 at Westminster Abbey in London.  I wish I had the funds to make it to London for that wedding because it will probably be the biggest wedding of my lifetime, aside from my own, of course. ;-)

They mentioned on the news that brides all over England were worried that their chosen wedding days would fall on the same day so I do feel sorry for them since there will no doubt be a few.  Way to have your special day totally eclipsed, right?

Alright, off to work on my novel.

Salacious Gossip!

So as much as I like to pretend that I'm way above such things, I am a sucker for celebrity gossip.  At my work, we carry US Weekly, Star, Life & Style and a couple other gossip magazines.  On my breaks I read them, which is great because I don't have to pay for them.  The last few months, the hype surrounding Prince William and his loooooong time girlfriend Kate Middleton has been growing higher and higher.  They have been dating forever and everyone has been speculating that an engagement is just around the corner.  I have been fascinated with them since the beginning, mostly because she is so pretty and elegant, and he is so handsome and he has been famous forever, but she is only famous because of him.  Since she is only a few years older than me, I always wonder what this must be like to be her, trying to make a relationship work with one of the most eligible bachelors in the world.

Well, the wait is over! Today they officially announced their engagement.  The wedding of the decade will take place next year and Kate Middleton will officially become Princess Catherine, and possibly, one day, queen of England.  So congratulations to them!