An Introduction to French Cinema: It's Hard to Get Aquainted

So, I'm yet to start this series because I'm yet to find a decent guide to help me along. My plan of attack is to watch some things in a historically chronological order, whilst also watching some contemporary stuff at the same time.

Problem is, I've not idea where to begin. There's an awesome-looking book on Book Depository called Studying French Cinema, but it's still three weeks away from release. So I'll have to wait on that one. I've looked at a couple of others such as French Cinema by Charles Drazin, but one review I read said that he sort of gives up on giving films made after 1959 (ie, after Luc Godard's Breathless) the attention they deserve. So that sort of doesn't work for me, because I'd like a book that thoroughly covers both old and new history. Especially new, because the broad Film History book I have right now has a decent amount of French film beginnings ... but it's pretty hefty reading and I'm only up to 1912 or something, so mentions of accessible French titles has so far been scarce.

I went into Newtown today in hopes that some of the bookshops that import from overseas would have something I could purchase, but in four shops I only found one second-hand book, and it was about comparing French films with their American remakes and studying the influence that the French film industry has on America. So that was no good.

It frustrates me how difficult it is to get books about the history of other countries here. Like, as if I want to read about Australian history (film or otherwise)! Who does that? It's no wonder bookshops here are failing and people are buying more things online. I can't find anything I want in an actual shop. Trying to find research material for Eloquence was (and still is) a bit of a nightmare; when looking for specific British history one can find only broad world history books or general overviews of the history of Britain, which isn't helpful because that means I'm buying a book for $30 and only getting like $5 of relevant reading material. So again, most of my books on the 19th-century have arrived in the mailbox from the UK. Obviously, when I go there I will be taking an empty suitcase and buying books.

As for film sections themselves, most of the space is taken up by Hollywood (obviously) with a few dodgy-looking titles about Australian film or about one specific person like Martin Scorcese (who is awesome, but in this case irrelevant).

So, this series will continue with content that is ACTUALLY ABOUT A MOVIE ... later on. Once I work out what the heck I'm doing. Meanwhile, I'm going to watch Public Enemies and pretend I'm cultured because Marion Cotillard is in the movie. Hehe.

P.S When I was in Newtown today there was a big crew of 30+ people shooting some kind of short film or a show. I stood around like a lost idiot and watched them for a bit, but they were all busy and I couldn't really ask them what was going on. I imagined they were from Sydney Film School, even though I knew they couldn't be because the crew was too big and very professional. Moral of this story: I'm excited for film school to start. One more month!

Un-Live Blogging

Here's my thought-process throughout the lunar eclipse that happened this evening. If you've been reading posts here for a while you'd know of my interest in Lunar Eclipses due to the important appearance of one in my WIP Eloquence. So this is sort of 'fun research' if one can get away with even calling it research. 

Beginning at 11:30pm Saturday, December 11^th, 2011, the moon and the sun are opposing each other. The sun is not visible but the clouds around it are a deep red like sunset. The moon is glowing bright white, surrounded by a circle of clouds drenched orangey-red from the sunlight. 

11:40 Darkness sets in! The lower edge of the moon is fading black.

12:17 am. The eclipse has taken about 50 minutes to become engulfed almost halfway. There is red only in the clouds surrounding the moon, and the half of the moon that has been eclipsed is black, like it has been swallowed in shadow. The brightness fades in and out, partly due to the cloud cover but also due to the amount of the moon that is ‘disappearing’. 

(Having to keep changing exposure times, which may be something the photographer could comment on, depending on how deep I want to go with the technology. Will have to research this.) 

12:23. And we’re pretty much at halfway. The moon is beginning to change dark red on the shadowed side. 

12:37. Rather disappointed at the cloud cover that is ruining the latest shots. It’s far too dark now to get a good photo. Might wait it out a bit to see if the clouds clear before we reach totality, but if it’s not any better by 1am I’ll have to retire. Also the laptop battery is low. 

12:40. A blanket of cloud is threatening to suck the moon in. The brightest thing now shining on my camera lens are the lights from the endless stream of taxis that keep coming down my street to pick up all the drunk people partying across the road. 3 minutes of battery life remaining. This could be it, folks. 

12:42. No moon to be seen. Lame. 

12:43. I can see a sliver of moon struggling to break through the clouds, but it’ll soon disappear what with this being an eclipse and all….

12:52. Just plugged the laptop back in after it died on me. Camera packed up now and doors locked so seeing the totality was not to be tonight. Guess I’ll have to wait until 2014! A tiny part of my soul expects that Eloquence will be finished by then, but with the amount of ideas in my head, who knows? Snuggled in bed now with clean sheets and a nice sleepy feeling, so I guess it’s a happy ending anyway. Will post pictures tomorrow if I get a moment! 

Hacking at the Plot

I've written about 700 words this morning, which is pretty nice. Not a lot, but still good. I'm happy with that.

I've realised that writing with an underage princess is no longer going to work, because I've decided to cut out a huge chunk of the plot and not have a regency. Elaine, you're now officially eighteen at the start of the story. The only thing bothering me about this is that I was going to have an epic steampunk masquerade party for your birthday, and now I'll have to figure out how to get that in the story without the excuse of a teenage royal coming of age. We'll work something out.

Sigh ... the things I must do to avoid a regency....

The Queen's Ladies

Good morning!

I don't have class until 5pm today so I decided to kick off the morning with a quick room-clean and then hit the keys for a good crack at Chapter Four. Normally I'm a bit OCD when it comes to cleaning my bedroom but I surprised myself by becoming so eager to get writing that there are still two large piles of clothes in here and dozens of books and papers scattered everywhere. Right now, I don't care!

I've been struggling with how to start Chapter Four. Elaine is supposed to meet with the House of Lords and make her little 'Now that I'm Queen...' speech, but I felt like that was too confronting an opening. I've finally come up with something that I like, and I get to hit two birds with one stone.

Throughout the other chapters I've had hopeless, brief mentions of Elaine's lady-in-waiting Evangeline, and yet I want her to become a strong supporting character later on. So far she isn't working; but I was  watching The Young Victoria (top of my list for ways to get inspiration for my story) and remembered how Queen Victoria's companion was at first her childhood governess, and when she became Queen she switched over to a brand new team of ladies to wait on her. I'm going to take this concept and scratch out all Evangeline's mentions and give her her very own introduction in Chapter Four. It will be much smoother and the subject will aid the introductory conversation between Elaine and Lawrence. Perfect!

Right, off to get this lovely idea out of my head and into my book. Ta ta for now.

Lockdown.

As much as I love sharing the writing that I am proud of ... that's just the problem. I can't let anyone read it unless I'm proud of it.

So, unfortunately for a couple lovely people who have been reading the first few chapters of Eloquence, I have to go into lockdown and say that I can't let any more of the story out for reading until I get a acceptable way through the first draft of the novel.

I hate to say it, but I'm becoming a perfectionist. This scene isn't supposed to be like that and that character isn't meant to talk like that I don't want the reader to get that impression or read this bit without knowing that.... And the list goes on. I'm not writing because I'm too bogged down in trying to get it right on the first try.

I'm telling you, self, it's just not possible!

I finally finished Chapter Three today. It's not perfect. I'm not happy with the sentence structure or the writing style or the character development, but hey, I wrote the first draft! And now I can keep going with the story. Yayness!

I'm on a mission!

Well hello there! It's been almost a month since I last blogged, but in that time I have come to a decision.

As most of you know, I really, really want to be a writer. One that gets things published. And I have come to the conclusion that this will not happen unless I (at least attempt to) stick to one project. Ever since I finished my one book back in 2008, I've been working on numerous projects. Fat Beagles Are Unattractive, Veridical, and Eloquence are and have been some of my biggest works, but I haven't completed any of them.

Yet.

When I wrote my fantasy novel it was the only book I worked on. I wrote it from start to finish, and then continued with a good nine or ten chapters of the second book, intending for it to be a four-book series. That is, until I discovered that my writing was actually not as good as I thought it was and I would need to work hard to make it better, and the best way to do that was to start a new project.

That's when Veridical was started. It too was a bit of a failure and though I wrote over 40,000 words with my ensemble of six characters I struggled with the chronology of the story and after a couple of years, ended up with a huge pile of inconsistent plot and three or four Mary-Sues. Some of the scenes I wrote in that time are still in my mental list of Best-Scenes-I've-Ever-Written, so once again I'm happy with what I did but not nearly satisfied.

And so we come to the now. I have an amazing novel in my mind. A murder mystery set in a mild-steampunk world based off 19th century England, with a huge dollop of political drama and class/status epic thrown in. It's the story I've been dreaming I could write since I penned my first six pages of fiction at age seven.

I adore my characters.

I love the mood and the genre.

I'm still excited about the plot two years after I began to develop it.

Yet I'm struggling to get this story on paper.

Why?

I get the feeling it's because I have not disciplined myself enough when it comes to my writing. This is because of two things. One is that I do not have a proper schedule, and so I can go days without writing and then hate myself for it later on. This will be fixed. I plan to come up with a proper schedule in the holidays. The other reason my story is not getting written is because when I do write, I distract myself from my main story with other ideas, like super powers and rewriting Fat Beagles and numerous other things that come into my head. When I get a good idea I get the urge to write about it immediately. I've decided that this is not the way to do things anymore. Now, when I get a good idea I will write it down and store it away in my filing cabinet for later, and knuckle down and solely writing Eloquence until the first draft is complete.

Ha, easier said than done.

Wish me luck. I really, really, want to do this. I hope I can manage it sooner than I think.

"I will turn over half a library to make one book." ~Samuel Johnson

So I was really excited that I'd figured out all the kinks in the murder scenario ... but I've run into a problem. My antagonist has to poison the King's bodyguard cougars before he/she can kill the King, and I wanted the poison to work within five or six hours at the most. I was going with methanol, initially, because it was looking great to possibly have one of the cougars survive the poisoning, and then be permanently blind, thus limiting their ability to be a witness (gosh, I sound like a lunatic. I promise that I would never poison anything living in real life, really), and then there would have been more layers to my story and more clues.

Unfortunately, as I continued my research on methanol, my perfect poison turned out not to be so perfect. Though it was easily accessible, fit into the time-period, and had symptoms that could fit into my plot, it apparently takes 12-36 hours for the effects of methanol poisoning to onset, and so the possibility of using it was totally out of the question. I need something that works within the schedule of the dinner party. 12-36 hours is way, way too long.

Thankfully though, when I was America I bought this book. It has a little information on poisons, so hopefully it will help me figure something out. I'm really looking forward to finally using this book - I've had it nearly a year now and haven't used it for any of my story, but it has great information on all the details of forensics including autopsies, time of death, fingerprints, bloodstains, trace evidence and firearms, all of which I will need to know about once the detective arrives. I love doing research.