Holy crap. Last night I went to LA (specifically, UCLA) for the Breaking Dawn Concert Series. Breaking Dawn is the final book in the Twilight saga, and this concert series took the place of a traditional book tour. It had all the normal book tour questions and stories, but it was also a concert featuring Justin Furstenfeld of Blue October. I love Twilight and Blue October, so I was bound to have a blast. The amazing part is that we had the best seats in the entire theater. Seriously, front row center. I could not only see facial expressions, I could see the eyeliner on Justin Furstenfeld’s eyes!! Considering how crazy dedicated Twilight fans are, I still don’t know how I scored such amazing seats. For once in life, Ticketmaster comes through. Justin was amazing live, and Stephenie Meyer is so nice and funny. Even with 1,800 books to sign, she still took the time to ask me how I was doing. We’re practically best friends now.
Stephenie is so nice that she almost made me feel bad for being incredibly disappointed in Breaking Dawn. The thing about the Twilight series is that it’s so fun to read. The plots are okay, but it’s all about the characters. I won’t go through my reasons for disliking Breaking Dawn, except to say that it was not fun to read and the characters didn’t seem like the same people from the other books. Oh, Edward.
On to the normal Friday rundown:
- I’m going home today! Yay! I plan to keep up regular posting while I’m in Washington if possible.
- This has been a crazy summer of favorite things for me. The last of the favorite things is the Olympics. I cannot wait. My favorite summer events are gymnastics and swimming, though I’m a little less excited for swimming this year since my favorite Australian swimmer, Ian Thorpe, retired. (Where do I claim my award for using the word “favorite” the most times in one paragraph?) There’s a lot of drama surrounding these Olympics and China, but the magic of the Olympics is still there.
- Just before I started this blog, I interviewed for a job at a financial firm. The interview went really well, but I never heard back, and like a total idiot, I never followed up. After two months, I no longer expected to hear from them, but this week I did receive a call. They wanted to know if I’d found a job yet. When I said that I’d accepted another offer, the woman who interviewed me apologized that things didn’t “solidify” on their end earlier, so that they could get their offer in first. I didn’t expect to get closure on this, but it’s nice to know that I didn’t totally misread what happened in the interview.
- So, after hearing nothing for months, I ended up with two offers and another potential job all at once. The job I was so excited about last week stands as the best offer, and I’ve officially accepted it. I start the day after I get back from vacation.
- Revising is not going fast, but it is going well. I’ve been rereading the novel from the beginning, and taking notes on everything I need to change. What’s missing the most from my first draft is description. It’s hard to describe what people look like without sounding cheesy, so for that reason, I haven’t done it at all. I also need to add description to the dialogue; too often even causal conversations seem rapid fire, because there’s no description to slow them down.
- I really need to finish packing. Have a great weekend!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, little miss popular! Looks like a bunch of companies want you!
Trust me, the financial industry is not where you want to be right now anyway. Though it might be good in a few years, it is going through a rough time (relative to the bank of course).
As far as the novel, I’ve had similar issues. One suggestion I’ve found as far as physical descriptions is that you can use dialogue to tell the reader about the characters. For example:
“You’ve grown a bit,” Sarah said tossing glances all over Jared’s body. “You must spend quite a bit of time in the gym with a stacked body like that.”
Of course, it can work with anything, but it tells the reader without necessarily spelling it out what a person looks like. Just like a guy can tell a girl he finds her eyes beautiful by stating, “I swear your eyes match the exact color of an evening sky.” Even though you never actually said the word “darker blue,” the reader gets the hint.
In some ways, it rewards those who are paying attention more.
That’s an excellent idea. Now that I think about it, I have worked in some description that way, but not intentionally. I’ll have to do more as I continue revising.
It’s never going to be my style to go heavy on description, but you have to do at least a certain amount of it.