Book Review: A Reliable Wife

DETAILS: A Reliable Wife: A Novel by Robert Goolrick.  Copyright 2009. Historical literary fiction.

SUMMERY: It's Wisconsin, 1907.  Ralph Truitt has advertised for a wife, not for love but for convenience.  But when she comes, she is not what he expected, a woman with a hidden past and a secret agenda of her own.

PROS: The storytelling is masterful, the story is filled with unpredictable twists and turns.  Mr. Goolrick weaves a master tale of love, loss and lust that leads to an unforeseen but satisfying ending. I wondered many times what would happen, as I could see a thousand possibilities.  But the choices Mr. Goolrick made were not what I expected, but were more fitting and satisfying than the ones I had thought of.

CONS: The book seemed a little slow to get going, it took me a couple of chapters to get into it.  Occasionally I felt the descriptions went on a little long.  His habit (albeit surely an intentional one) of starting consecutive sentences with the same pronoun, grated on my nerves a bit.  Also a warning to readers of a sensitive nature: this book would be rated R for sexual content, so just be aware of that going in.

BOTTOM LINE:  The story is a little slow, but perfectly woven. Fans of Cormac McCarthy's writing will enjoy this book as well.  Four stars out of five.

Book Review: The House of Hope and Fear

DETAILS: The House of Hope and Fear:Life in a Big City Hospital, by Audrey Young, M.D. Copyright 2009. Medical non-fiction.

SUMMERY:  Dr. Young was an attending physician at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.  The book recounts her struggles and challenges at the largest public hospital in a four-state area.  She shares stories of specific patients, especially the "undesirable" patients: those that are homeless, drunk or drug-addicted, that come through Harborview's doors.  She presents the business side of the medical field; the challenge of balancing the budget, of under staffing and overcrowding.

PROS:  Dr. Young's narrative style is engaging and easy to read.  She does a good job of presenting the struggle to balance cost and quality of care and the human side to the medical field.  Her book is informative and well-rounded.  For me, as a pre-nursing student and a Harborview volunteer, I found the details of patient care fascinating.

CONS:  This is clearly intended to be a persuasive piece about health-care reform.  Not that this is necessarily negative, but the book is not purely objective. I wished there were more details of patient care and less about the business side of the hospital, but this is purely my opinion.  If I were not interested in the medical field, I probably would have found some of the details a little dry, but with my background, I did enjoy them.

BOTTOM LINE: Despite any blurbs that might suggest otherwise, this is not Grey's Anatomy.  I would recommend this book for anyone interested in the medical field, however, some other people might not find it as interesting.  Three stars out of five.

Screenwriting for Novelists

TODAY BY NUMBERS:

Total word count of The Language of the Unheard: 52,008

Number of form rejections for Finding Innisburg: 0 (not sure if this is good or bad)

Number of books you have to read and review for the Seattle Public Library system to be entered to win a Kindle: 3

Number of free book giveaways entered on GoodReads.com: 15


So now for our main topic.  Screenwriting.  Last summer I decided to attempt to write a screenplay.  Although I'm fairly convinced that I will never be a famous screenwriter (Hollywood has too many politics and rules and cliques.  I prefer good old-fashioned publishing), writing a screenplay may have been the best thing I ever did for my writing abilities.

Screenwriting in much, much different than novel writing.  I didn't even write an original screenplay, I just adapted one of my favorite novels, Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.  Screenplays are the epitome of SHOW don't TELL.  In a screenplay you can't even write a phrase like "Tom, Joe's brother, enters the room."  Unless Tom is going to be wearing a sign around his neck that says "Joe's brother" you can't put it in the screenplay.  You have to find a way to work it into the dialogue.  This is tricky, let me tell you.

Descriptions of locations have to be kept short and sweet also.  In screenwriting, one page of properly formatted text = one minute of screen time (approximately).  So if a scene is going to be shown for three seconds before the characters start talking, you have to sum up the scene in only a line or two.  No long-winded pages of purple prose here.  The trick is to choose one or two details that "sum up" the scene.  Instead of saying "The farmhouse is old and blue.  There is a flower bed in front but the flowers are dead and brown.  The fence running behind the house is falling down and the barbed wire is rusty.  The grass is long, clearly no animals have grazed here in a while," you cut it down to the essentials: "The paint on the farmhouse is peeling and the rusty barbed wire is sagging into the overgrown grass."

In screenwriting, the specific details (the color of the house, or exactly how many plants are in front) are pointless to put in, because the director is not going to follow your directions that closely.  What you want is to make a point about WHAT KIND of farmhouse this is, and let the director follow through with the details.

In novel writing, the same principle can be applied, not because a director is going to come in and change it, but because leaving some details up to your readers imagination is crucial.  Unless this is a classic Martian farmhouse, a reader will be able to fill in the scene without you spelling out every detail.  Pick a few things that sum up the feel of the scene and leave the rest out.  Over describing can pull a reader out of the scene, while the right choice of details can make them feel like they're right there with you.  Of course, if they were to draw what they pictured the farmhouse looking like, it might not be how you pictured it at all, but that's okay.  When a book is read, the reader brings his or her own experiences to the table and views the story against the backdrop of his or her life. 

So if you've ever been curious about writing a screenplay, even if you have no intention of selling it, I would absolutely recommend it.  Screenplays are short and sweet.  At 90-120 sparsely-filled pages, they are much faster to write than a novel, and you just might learn a thing or two about writing in the process.  I would highly recommend the book How Not to Write a Screenplay by Denny Martin Flinn for anyone thinking of undertaking this project.  The book covers formatting, plotting and everything else you need to know.  Also, every April the NaNoWriMo people have a screenwriting month called Script Frenzy, in which screenwriters attempt to write 100 pages of a screenplay in a month.

Happy Noveling!

P.S. If any of you noveling folks are on GoodReads.com, you should friend me!  My user name is Annakaris

On libraries, planning and psyching myself out

Word count on The Language of the Unheard: 51,012

Form Rejections on Finding Innisburg: 1 (so far.  Although it's almost 9 PM in NYC so that's probably it for tonight.

Super nice emails from the Agency Gatekeeper: 1

Volunteer Hours at Harborview Medical Center: 3

Holds placed at the library: 3

So about a year ago, I went on a library borrowing spree, checked out a TON of books, and then couldn't get myself over to the library to return them until they were...pretty late.  So I've had about 40 dollars in late fees that I have been putting off paying, and as a result, I have been buying books instead of borrowing them from the library.  Finally I realized that didn't make any financial sense, and I really wanted to read some new books (not ones I could find for cheap at the used bookstore next door), so I am going to go into the library tomorrow and pay my fees.  And from now on, I'm going to be good and return my books on time.  And I placed three holds on books from my GoodReads "to read" list.

I'm mulling over ideas for my next book(s).  For NaNoWriMo, I think I'm going to attempt my first fantasy novel but between now and then, I'm going to try to outline another book to write after the fantasy novel is finished.  The problem is, I have about four ideas and I can't decide which one I want to do.  So that's where you come in.  Here are the four choices, so leave me a comment and tell me which one you think you'd most like to read.

A.  A paranormal thriller about a little boy sucked into a creepy wormhole by an evil child, and his sister's quest to get him back.

B.  A historical fiction novel about a female pirate.  NOT a romance novel, more action-adventure.  Set in the golden age of piracy (1700's-ish)

C.  A mystery novel about a woman who was given a necklace many years earlier by Elvis, and discovers that it holds the secret to a series of murders.

D. A journalist goes undercover as a prostitute and gets mixed up with the mob/a gang and has to fight for her life and the life of her young child.

So anyway, tell me what you think!

I've been reading a lot of blogs and writing sites lately and I have to keep remembering not to get too caught up in trends.  It's not so much that I want to write books that are trendy, that's never really been  desire of mine, but when I have an idea for a book, and then I read something that says that books like that are "out" I get freaked out.  For example, my fantasy novel that I'm planning for NaNoWriMo, is technically a "portal fantasy" and apparently portal fantasy is not cool anymore.  But I am reminding myself to write what I love and not worry about it.

Works in Progress

So it's summer vacation, the weather is finally nice here in Seattle, and here's what I've been up to.

First of all, I added about eleven thousand words to "Finding Innisburg" my NaNoWriMo novel from 2010.  It was originally only about 51,000 words, but at the advice of several people, I fleshed it out a little, and extended the ending and it now stands at a more respectable 62,000 words.

Then I re-wrote my query letter, after reading all the archives at Query Shark and rewrote my synopsis and then began to query agents for the second time.  I've decided it's do or die right now for "Innisburg."  If this round of querying doesn't produce an agent, I'm going to move on, and maybe someday it can be the second book of a two-book deal or something.

But the good news is, I've had two requests for full manuscripts, so that's nice.

Then I finished my zombie novel from last summer, which is currently titled "The Language of the Unheard."  I wrote about 30,000 words of it last year so I added another 20,000 to finish the story.  Fortunately I had done a pretty extensive outline for it before I wrote it, so I was able to pick up where I left off.  Now I'm going back and editing/fleshing it out as well.

I also, while procrastinating from working on my real projects, have been doing some fun research for a couple other books.  If I don't get into nursing school in the fall, I'm probably going to try to do NaNoWriMo again this year, and maybe I'll write another book before then.  Anyway, I have a couple ideas for books that I think will be awesome: a fantasy novel, a contemporary thriller, a historical action-adventure and a mystery.  So we'll see.

In my non-writing spare time, I've been volunteering at Harborview Medical Center and getting ready to take my nursing assistant state exam next week.  Plus I just discovered (I know, where was I this whole time!) Miss Snark and I read every single blog entry she ever did in about a week.  I'm also loving a couple of other agent blogs: Agency Gatekeeper and her former intern (Internet Famous Intern)'s blog pinkrobotgirl.blogspot.com. So anyway, if you know anymore fabulous writing/agenting blogs, let me know!

Happy Writing!

Update and 100th Entry

Well, I figured I shouldn't let a whole year go by without posting a new entry, so let me update you on what I've been doing.

Since September I've been going to school full time at a community college in Seattle.  I'm taking prerequisites with the hope of getting into nursing school in the fall.  I have taken anatomy and physiology, psychology, nutrition, math, chemistry, microbiology and a class to become a certified nursing assistant.  As of this week, I am officially done with my prerequisites for nursing school.  Over the summer I won't be doing anything except hopefully some writing!

I am mulling over a new idea for a book, so we'll see where that goes. 

Just wanted to say hi!

Mea Culpa

Okay, I have officially failed miserably in my writing attempts. Mostly because this blog is supposed to be about me and my writing and I haven't really done any serious writing in quite some time. My apologies.

So what have I been doing? Well, playing far, far too much solitaire, baking lots of bread, trying to talk Aaron into letting me make him an apple pie (what guy DOESN'T want a homemade apple pie??? Weirdo.), watching Star Trek: The Next Generation.

First off, something that gave me a good laugh today. I was watching the news and they were reporting on a young man who nearly drowned in Hood Canal (no, that's not what made me laugh. That is very tragic.) They showed a live video of the victim being unloaded from a helicopter on a stretcher on top of Harborview Medical Center. Then it cut back to the reporter who said, "That victim, who we just showed being unloaded from the helicopter, is now inside the hospital. Now back to the studio." It was just rediculous. Of course they took him inside the hospital. I could have figured that out by myself.

Anyway, I'm making chili, which I'm sure will be delicious. That's about it for me. I'll try to be more regular in my updates.