Surprisingly legitimate? You cannot pay for this kind of acclaim, I tell you.

Then there’s the comment some kind online poker player left on my post, Solutions for Problems Installing iOS 4 for iPod Touch and iPhone: “I’ve learn several good stuff here. Definitely price bookmarking for revisiting. I surprise how a lot effort you put to make any such great informative site.”

Finally, all my hard work has been noticed by someone pointing out the several good stuff here.

And some comments aren’t just about the posts. No, some have kindly given me fashion advice. Like this one, left on my Creating a playlist for your writing post:

“In relation to exhibiting off your persona by means of jewellery, most of the time you can generate a more substantial statement with a lot less. Pick out daring, dramatic items, but limit on your own to putting on a person or two at a time. A advanced pair of chandelier earrings can set off an outfit on it’s individual, and at times a flashy cocktail ring would be the only glitz you need to draw interest.”

Chandelier earrings and a flashy cocktail ring? Why I’m wearing them as I type this! And I do generally try to limit myself to put on only one or two persons at a time but, hey, sometimes I just can’t help myself.

Now, you might wonder why I posted these here instead of say, approving them in the comments of the very posts they were left for. Well, I try to stay humble about these things and have shared only a few of them here. I can’t go approving comments for all the kind people who find several good stuff here. That would just be too much. I’m not one to brag. Now, I have to go because typing while wearing this flashy cocktail ring is killing my hand. Please feel free to leave comments if you find this post surprisingly legitimate.

Myself: I heard a story on the radio this morning of a person being arrested for impaired driving last night. Sam guy was arrested for impaired driving twice in one day last month.That’s scary.

Me: “How is this kind of horrific stupidity allowed to occur?

Myself: What? How can you say that? You know that this man obviously has a serious problem with alcohol and, as someone who worked in addictions for quite a while, you should know better than to call him ’stupid’. He’s ill. He needs help.

I: No, she meant the horrific stupidity of a legal system that lets impaired people, and their vehicles, go free so then impaired drivers can have another shot at it. The man does need help and protection. From himself.

Myself: Oh, okay. Yes, well, that’s true.

Me: So they should impound the vehicle of anyone arrested for impaired driving.

I: Sure. I mean they impound vehicles that are parked illegally when it’s winter and the car is impeding snow clearing. And the same is true, I think, if a car is parked in a loading zone. That car is towed and you can’t get it back until you pay up.

Me: Exactly. Surely impounding the vehicle of a drunk driver is a perfectly sensible way to prevent that person from driving again, at least until he sobers up, for God’s sake.

I: Now, calm down. Don’t get all riled up.

Me: But I am riled up. Really riled up. Pissed off, the truth be told. I do not understand why we don’t impound vehicles used in DUIs, for the safety of the public and the safety of impaired drivers themselves. If we made the cost to get the cars back more than it costs to get a few cab rides, maybe some lives could be saved. DUI offenders obviously can’t police themselves and taking away their licenses doesn’t work so you have to take the cars away.

Myself: But what if the impaired driver is driving a vehicle that belongs to someone else.

Me: Tough! If that person was uncaring and irresponsible enough to loan a car to someone who was intoxicated or has been repeatedly intoxicated while driving or could conceivably be intoxicated while driving the vehicle, then too bad.

I: I don’t think they care about who owns the car when they tow away the car parked on the side of the road and impeding snow clearing.

Me: True.

Myself: But that’s different. If the city can’t plow the roads, then people might be in danger. In that case impounding the vehicle is for public safety… Oh.

Me: Yeah, exactly. Public safety. Even you can’t argue with that.

I: Well, someone must be arguing against it or else we’d be impounding the vehicles.

Myself: I’m riled up now too. We should blog about this.

I: Okay but first you need some coffee. You know you’re not fit to be around until you get your coffee.

Seriously, how fabulous is Ricky Gervais?

Christopher Plummer has been married for 43 years. That’s like 764 in Hollywood years.

The eyes of that woman on the screen are saying, “get your greasy paws off me, Jeremy Irons”.

Looked like Elton John gave Madonna the stinkeye. I bet he was thinking, “she took my award AND my accent”.

Loved Felicity Huffman and William Macy doing harmony to sing the intro to the award they were presenting.

Tina Fey and Jane Lynch: two of the funniest women on TV making the funny perfectly.

I’m missing something important on the Golden Globes. Can’t quite place it. Wait, oh yes, the host! Rickygervais where are you?

Morgan Freeman is so awesome. I still always think of him as the guy from The Electric Company, though. Now, that’s dating myself.

My, these awards, given out to by The Foreign Press Association, sure end up going to a lot of people who aren’t American. And Meryl Streep and George Clooney, of course.

Less Plastic Surgery and More Wrinkles
Seriously, there are so many actors and actresses now that make me cringe when I look at them because of their altered faces. Not just facelifts that make them look like they’ve been in a cartoon windstorm and their face stayed that way, but Botox where nothing moves and eye jobs where eyes start to look more like the eyes I draw when I create portraits (AKA stick figures)–just holes in a face with no actual eye shape. Lips that are permanently puckered, like they’re always waiting for the kiss that never comes. They actually call them ‘bee-stung lips’ and they get them sometimes by injecting fat from their thighs or stomachs. I guess for people who inject botulism into their skin, lips that emulate being attacked by an insect is a great idea.

Obviously there are good plastic surgeons out there because all the worked on faces don’t look like a horror movie gone wrong. There are people who are eighty and look forty who, when they look into the camera during an interview and say “I haven’t had any work done”, you can’t come right back and say, “well, why are your ears so incredibly close to your eyes?”. Those people are lucky to have gotten a good surgeon and to not have gone batshit crazy with the plastic surgeries. But even those people are annoying because they just can’t look that good at that age. NO ONE BELIEVES YOU DIDN’T HAVE WORK DONE! Own up to it, for God’s sake. I don’t care what creams and peels you use, it’s not possible (unless you’re African American because the phrase–and I sincerely hope this is not an offensive phrase because it is truly only used as a compliment mixed with a lot of envy–’black don’t crack’ appears true).

I would like to see people on TV and in movies with wrinkles. I would like for, say, someone who is playing a grandmother, to look older than her grandchild. I would like people to blink and raise their eyebrows and smile, you know, have facial expressions. A scowl! My God, a scowl would be great. Let’s go for that crazy trend in 2012.

More of Once Upon a Time

Oh my. I love this show on ABC. And I didn’t expect to. I’m not a big fan of fantasy or fairy tales but this is awesome on so many levels. Basically, it’s the story of the story book world and all its characters brought into the real world through the curse of Snow White’s evil stepmother. None of the cursed people know they’re really from storybooks (well, almost none). But one boy in the town where all these characters live, found a book that tells the true story. The stories of the characters as people in fairy tales are mixed through flashbacks with the stories of the people in the town during present day. There is a battle brewing and the evil queen (the mayor in the present day real town) has met her match in the biological mother of the boy who found the book. Played by Jennifer Morrison (Cameron of Fox’s House M.D.), Emma Swan is tied into this whole tale. We know pretty early on how she’s connected but I don’t want to ruin it for you. It’s such a suspenseful, fascinating mix of reality and fantasy where good is really good and evil is really evil. And with the kind of connections and twists I love.

Iron Lady

Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher. Isn’t that brilliant? Do I even need to say more?

Less Hipsters

I’ll be honest. I don’t know what a hipster is but I hear a lot about them and the whole thing gets on my nerves. And that’s reason enough for me to want to less of it all. Cracked has some great things to say about them.

That’s it for what I want to see in 2012. At least the fluffy, unimportant stuff. There’s lots more I want to see in 2012 like world peace, a cure (or at least a treatment or vaccine for) cancer and other terrible diseases, the occupy movement to lead to real change, more jobs, less poverty, and a more healthy environment, to name but a few. I’d take all the Kardashians and facelifts you could throw at me in exchange for those things.

The new season of Republic of Doyle

If you’re not a Newfoundlander, Republic of Doyle is a great television show filled with action, humour and thrills about a PI named Jake Doyle and the mysteries he solves with his father. If you are from Newfoundland, Doyle is all that, a bag of chips, and loaded with inside humour that make it just a teensy bit more enjoyable for us than the rest of the world. We love Doyle.

Republic of Doyle is so much a part of our pride and culture that it seems things revolve around it. No sense trying to get someone to go for a coffee or a movie on a Wednesday night. And no good suggesting you record it because there’s something about being there when the joke is first told on the screen or the shirt first hauled off, that makes it better. I was recently at a gathering where a woman said she’d never watched Republic of Doyle. The room became silent and people looked at her like she said she ate baby poop for breakfast. A Newfoundlander saying she doesn’t watch Republic of Doyle is sort of like a six-year-old girl saying “Justin Beiber sucks”. It just seems wrong.

Even more exciting about the upcoming season is Russell Crowe (yes, that Russell Crowe) guest starring in the season premiere. I like him, not just because he is a huge movie star but because he “gets” Newfoundland and Labrador and likes the place and the people. Also, he’s a fabulous actor. He’s got the Oscar to prove it but maybe you missed one of my favourite movies of his, State of Play. I think it was highly underrated. You should check it out if you get a chance. It’s a political thriller in which he plays an investigative journalist and it includes music from our own Great Big Sea (their lead singer, Alan Doyle, is also guest starring on the premiere of Doyle and, of course, GBS plays the show’s theme song).

I’m looking forward to the premiere of Republic of Doyle, starring Allan Hawco, on January 11 on CBC. You should too!

The end of the Kardashians

Okay, I don’t really mean the end as in I want them all dead. That wouldn’t be nice. But I would like the end of the obsession people seem to have with them. And when I say, “people”, I don’t really know who I mean. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say they like the Kardashians or care about what they’re doing. But Kardashians seemingly have seventeen thousand television shows and are on the cover of every magazine. Seriously. I just googled “Kardashian cover”" and got over 99 million image results. It’s truly nauseating. One of them got married and then quickly divorced this summer, which meant I was exposed to all kinds of “news” stories about it and articles and videos and tweets until I felt like I was somehow being punished for something I’d done in a past life. Karma Kardashian, I think she was called. (And while I’m at it, I think such ridiculous examples of marriage as that one really makes me question how people can say that gay marriage would somehow take away from the sanctity of marriage. I’d say any of these fly-by-night, media frenzied celebrity marriages have done far more to hurt any such sanctity than the joining of two people of the same sex who love each other. Puhleeze.) Anyway, I’d just like for the great “they” that is popular culture to snap out of this weird Kardashian love and let them go the way of other cultural icons like, say, Paris Hilton who I thankfully don’t hear much about anymore.

A new Nick Hornby book

I don’t believe there’s a new Nick Hornby book coming out but it is something I’d like to see in 2012. Hey, I can dream, right?

Facebook to give it up already

I am hooked on facebook but they change things too much. Now, they’ve got timeline coming and it looks just awful to me. So, I would love, love, love if facebook would just leave well enough alone.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

They’re coming here in June and hubby and I have tickets. We haven’t been to a concert in years but this is one I’m really looking forward to.

More of what I want to see in 2012 in Episode 2

My goal could just be more blogging but look through this blog and you’ll see such empty promises scattered amongst the posts. No, I need something more concrete but also realistic. So, I’ll say once a week at least. And that’s really no good for a blogging slackard like me so I need something more  regular. Let’s say….every Tuesday. Yeah, a new blog post every Tuesday, at the very least. I can do that. I resolve to post every Tuesday, at least.

There. I already posted one this year. And it’s not even Tuesday yet! I’m getting better already. See you on Tuesday. Or with a really good excuse on Wednesday.

After I thought I had finished my last novel, A Few Kinds of Wrong, I went to a retreat with some good friends, who happen to be writers as well. We decided to do some mini-critiques (because that’s how we roll) and I read two parts of my manuscript which I thought were pretty darn good. And then those sections of the MS (not I) got critiqued. Hard. We actually argued and it got to the point that one friend was trying to stop it all because she thought I needed a break. The next morning I had figured out that I needed to scrap the whole book and rewrite it all. A couple of them kindly told me that wasn’t necessary and that I just had to make some key changes and, more importantly, had to figure out why my main character was so messed up. Didn’t matter if that came out in the book or not but I had to know. And so I went through it again and found her motivation and even that of other characters and it made it a soooo much better book. It was a hard lesson to learn but a good one. They wanted to make the book better and their advice did exactly that, once I got past how bad that critique felt. My problem wasn’t what they said, it was the fact that I went into the critique thinking they would tell me how great my pieces were, and they did that too, but now I always receive critiques trying to remember it’s about making the book better.

The other part of making a critique not hurt so much is separating from your book. It is not you. When there are flaws in the work, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are a terrible writer or that there is no hope. Everything can be fixed (at least up until it goes to print) and everything should be fixed. I know it came from you and you chose that word over the other one and you made the character too cookie-cutter or too unrealistic but if you really want to make your work better, you have to separate yourself. When someone you trust, who is kind and honest, looks at your work with a critical eye and tells you where things need to be improved, they are not telling you that you are awful. They are telling you that this particular part of this particular work is not as good as it possibly could be or that they question something about it.

Yes, it may sting a bit, no matter how much you separate from it. My husband is a mechanic and any day where the car he fixed the week before comes back in with a similar problem is a bad day. But he deals in the wonderful world of fixed and not fixed and you, if you’re a writer, live in a subjective world. And you better get used to it because this world is one where your character’s name will make a certain number of your readers angry just because their mean third grade teacher, or rotten boyfriend, or nasty cousin has that name. Your book will never please everyone. NEVER. Put that out of your mind and just make it the best book you can make. All you can do, is take the advice your trusted readers give you and make the best story you can.

And thank them. Trusted readers are so important.

Then take their critiques, haul out the manuscript again, pour yourself some wine to take the sting away a bit, or eat some chocolates or whatever soothes your hurts, and start making it better.

Oh, and if you’re nervous or anxious about your first reader looking at it, this part is terrifying. Because you’re not asking someone to look over a car. You’re asking someone to pick apart something you’ve spent months or years working on. You’re asking them to critically look at the characters you’ve come to love, characters you think of as almost real people. And when they find thing wrongs, it can make you feel bad. And angry. And maybe you, just for a few moments, would like to flatten the tires on their cars and tell them how you never really liked them. But they’ve done you a favour by taking the time to read and analyze your work so you must let that go and never, ever, flatten their tires (if they’re writers and you tell them you never liked them, right after a critique, they’ll understand it’s temporary and move on).

The key is to pick people who your trust AND who will be kind and honest with you.

Now, if you don’t know any writers, that’s okay. You know readers and you know the ones whose opinions you trust, the ones who always seem to recommend the right books to you. If you think you can trust them and they can be honest while being kind, they’ll work out just fine.

If you can find people who accept critique well themselves, and have been critiqued often, then they’re probably going to be good at it. They have figured out how to critique and probably know  the sandwich kind of critique people need, where you layer all the things that don’t work and need to be fixed between two slices of praise at the beginning and end of your critique. Give me that and I’ll be as good as I can be with it.

But how good can you be with it? Now this is the part where you have to try to do the hardest thing when getting your manuscript critiqued or edited. (Later, if you’re good and lucky and don’t give up and get published, you’ll also need to do this when your book gets reviewed.) At this point you have to separate yourself from your work. One of the toughest parts of writing, in my opinion. And the thing that I’ll tell you about it part 3.

Like I said, my husband is always my first reader. I pass him a manuscript when  it’s had about two good drafts: a first draft and then a solid editing and revising to make it a pretty good second draft. Then it’s time for opinions.

I always hand it over with trepidation and even anxiety. It’s hard to know when you’re the only one who’s read it, if the thing is any good or not. Or if it even works as a novel. That’s why others reading your work is imperative. And why you must trust your first readers. I’m also excited to give him the manuscript because now, finally, after such a long time having these people live in your head, someone else knows about them and you can speak about them out loud and someone will know what you’re talking about. You can say “or so Liz would say” and he’ll understand. Or, even better, your first reader will say, “when I saw that on the news, I wondered what Bob (a character) would think about it”. Your characters always seem more real once you share them.

I know other writers who would never let a spouse critique their work and I don’t blame them. It could get pretty nasty if the spouse hated it. I think part of the reason my husband is such a great reader is that he’s not a writer. I look to him not for literary analysis or spell-checking (not that he doesn’t pick up on those things) but for noticing technical details like “that road wasn’t built then” or “a brake job wouldn’t take that long”. He’s good at things like timelines and inconsistencies in characters or setting.

Most of all, my first reader can tell me if it makes sense and if he likes it. In some ways, he is my every reader. He doesn’t edit things professionally or even write and therefore ever have to edit himself. He reads the book as any reader would, but with a slightly more critical eye.

I think he’s my first reader not just because he picks up on all those little things I miss or the fact that he enjoys reading over my manuscripts for me. No, the reason is that I trust him, not just to find those things but to talk to me after he’s finished reading and give me his honest opinion. He is the only person I can get a critique from and not feel a teeny bit defensive or hurt or even angry and crushed. I know that when he tells me something he didn’t like about it or questions a character or something that happened in a plot, it is coming from a place that wants, more than anything, to help me make it better and nothing else. Because not only is he my first reader, he’s my first cheerleader too and no one wants me to do better than he does. If you find a first reader like that, you’re very lucky. Hang onto him or her. They’re invaluable. But other trusted readers are important to have too. And I’ll post about them tomorrow in part 2.