‘Fess Up Friday: The FAIL week

/ Shellie

Well, that didn’t go well.

Remember last Friday when I was all, “Tra-la, tra-la! I’m feeling better and birds are singing and sickness will not get me down?” Well, I spoke too soon. Friday was fine. Great, in fact. On Saturday, I felt like I’d been trampled by a herd of elephants in my sleep and the feeling did not go away until Wednesday afternoon. Whatever it was that I got last week was not through with me yet.

So I guess I answered my own question. Yes, writers take sick days. I ended up taking a sick week, since the minute I actually started feeling better, I had to run all the errands and work on all the paying assignments I’d put off since Saturday, including a critique of a fantasy piece that has me all excited for my crit partner. Work on my own projects definitely fell by the wayside, but I took a lot of heart in a comment Adina West left last week about how watching a good film or two counts as inspiration for later writing. This is so true. I draw a lot of inspiration from films and television shows. To me, a well-told story is a well-told story; it doesn’t matter if I read it or watch it. It even makes me a little sad when people, especially other writers scoff at television as if it were a lesser medium. I feel sad for everything they’ve missed out on: The Wire, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, just about anything written by Joss Whedon…

What tv shows, movies, or other forms of media inspire you? Comics? Art? Puppets?

And on that note, I managed to do a lot of reading and watching television this week. Here’s what I

Read:

  • The Sky is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson
  • The Wishbones, Tom Perotta
  • Seth Baumgartner’s Love Manifesto, Eric Luper

Watched:

  • 30 Rock, Season 4 (Yeah, the entire thing. I mentioned I was sick, right?)
  • Friday Night Lights, Eps. 4×1 – 4×6

And a reminder for any of you Austin (or nearby) types out there that might be reading this. The Texas Book Festival is this weekend at the Capitol. The author list is pretty amazing: Laurie Halse Anderson, Scott Westerfield, Holly Black, Justin Cronin, Varian Johnson, and well, too many to name. I plan to be out there for as long as my health holds up. You can follow me on Twitter for updates.

Happy Writing!

 

6 thoughts on “‘Fess Up Friday: The FAIL week”

  1. I’m a fellow crusader.

    I’m sorry that you’re not feeling well. But I agree with you on the television front. Lots of inspiration there. As a matter of fact, books read similarly to tv in that they go from scene to scene and the reader barely notices.

    I tried writing a screenplay a couple of times and it was no easy feat. In books we have to describe everything. But in screenplay form the dialogue is more important because they can just film the setting.

    Great post! Feel better soon.

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  6. I’m glad I said something that made someone feel a little better. 🙂 And that’s going to inspire a BIG CONFESSION. I’m a writer, but I don’t read as much as I should. As I could. As much as some writers obviously do.

    People who are posting book reviews every other day leave me in awe, ‘cos not only have they read the book but they’ve thought about it and written about it too, all probably while I was making rice-with-egg for my daughter, or maybe sipping tea with other mums at playgroup. So I think I’ve answered the unasked question of why I don’t read more. Because I have limited time, and I can’t easily fit it in.

    In my defence, I spent most of my childhood in a TV-free household, and during my younger years read pretty much anything that came with paper and a spine. So I have read plenty in the past. But in more recent years, TV and movies have certainly become a big source of story ideas and inspiration, and there are so many Joss Whedon fans out there that I’m no longer ashamed to admit it. 😉

    So I think you’re right: a story is a story, regardless of what media is used to tell it. Regardless of what form it takes.

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