Yesterday was the sad twenty-second anniversary of Jim Henson’s death. That seems impossible partly because I remember whole days in 1990.
But also because that means we’ve been slogging around this earth without the creativity of Mr. Henson for twenty-two years! Imagine what he would have come up with by now.
Last night my husband’s response to my lament about no one picking up the mantel was that Pixar has put out some good things and I agree – to an extent. But Pixar’s creations aren’t huggable now are they?
He just…thought differently. Created differently – took what was essentially a marketing and advertising tool and managed to change the way we teach kids as well as kids themselves.
In other news, I’m deep in the mud and slog of novel revision right now. This is me:
I am both Atreyu and Artax, simultaneously. I’ve got some plot problems, holes if you will, or as I like to call them giant craters into which all known logic falls. So I’m trying to hammer them out.
My techie friends, well really my one pro-tech friend has repeatedly offered Scrivener as a way to solve all my problems, but I just can’t seem to do it. I don’t know what it is about me. I’m not, contrary to popular opinion, a Luddite. I just feel strange using a program for things that my own stupid brain should be able to track. You know, like the damn plot that I created in this stupid brain.
So instead I’m getting index cards and tapping them up on my writing wall to track what happens when, why and how. Possibly I need a blackboard. I read somewhere that Rebecca Stead, who wrote “When You Reach Me” (which is fantastic and if you haven’t read it, please get thee to the library) used a blackboard to keep all the time travel stuff in place but of course, now I can’t find that quote. But I found this quote instead. It is her answer to the question “Has it gotten any easier, writing?”
“Uhmm, noo, it hasn’t gotten any easier. I do have faith more, that I can make my work better. You’re inevitably disappointed by what’s on the page, because you have some idea that just seems good enough that you want to start writing it, but then when it starts getting down there on the page it’s inevitably a disappointment.’ Rebecca laughs….‘It’s not what was in here,’ she says, indicating her head, ‘and you almost feel like you’re killing it by putting it down, but what you learn is that you have to keep pushing past that stage and then learn how to lift your story up as high as you can. So now, I’m still disappointed by what’s there, but I’m better at thinking “well let’s just move on, it’s time to start pulling it up now,” so I get a little less stuck.”
You can read the whole thing here at BookWitch.
Okay…back to work. Time to start pulling up.
Ally Malinenko 