Friday, December 16, 2011

Deja Vu Blogfest

Today is the Deja Vu Blogfest! Where we dig up a favorite or important post that we feel needs a second look.

I've chosen what I felt was one of my funnier posts. It was written, I think, in the first two weeks of my blog being born, so it got some hits, but not that many.

So I blew the dust off for one more run.

Re-Introducing:



That's a Bitch Move, Jo March


I was eating lunch the other day and had nothing to watch on my DVR (in case you didn't know, my job lets me work at home, which is just as awesome as you think it is and also full of more sweatpants than you'd guess). Typically I have a swath of TV shows that I tape purely for watching during my lunch break, but Castle is on hiatus as with everything else. Therefore I had to channel surf and I found Little Women. It was half an hour in but I hadn't seen it in a long time so I started watching.

Barring the fact that I forgot Christian Bale was in it



I love you even with your dickery


I love you D'Artagnan. I mean Gabriel



Along with Gabriel Burns, Susan Sarandon AND Claire Danes, I'd also forgotten how awesome it is. I taped it after my lunch break so I could finish watching it in the evening (which is why I only got 300 words written that night on my WIP. Yes, it was definitely Little Women and not Zombie shooting. Not. At. All)

On a side note Brother apparently says he's never seen Little Women before, evidenced by the fact when he came in he said "What is this crap? It looks stupid." Even though BETH HAD JUST DIED and IT WAS NOT STUPID!

On a side note off the first side note, whenever I think of Little Women I'm reminded of the Friends episode where Monica finds Stephen King's IT in her refrigerator. She discovers that Joey put it in the fridge because it had frightened him, which is apparently his usual solution for books that upset him. So Monica suggests that he reads Little Women instead. He goes through almost the whole book thinking Jo is a man and Laurie is a girl. At the end of the episode Joey is all upset that Beth died and Monica's solution is for him to put Little Women in the fridge.

Back to the first side note - I do think Brother has seen Little Women, he just probably doesn't remember.

Back to the main point of the post. I was thinking about how Jo was writing, more or less, genre fiction and Friedrich is all "oh it's good but I know you can do better" and blah blah blah and I'm all like "Maybe Jo wants to write about zombies and steampunk and maybe you should just shut your mouth Friedrich" but not really because it's Gabriel Byrne and I lurve him.



So then Beth dies and it's sad (AND NOT STUPID) and Jo takes one night (HAH!) to write a new wonderful novel called *Gasp* Little Women (and I freak out because of the paradox of her writing the book that the movie is based on that I'm watching where she's writing a book and...well you get it. Mind Freak!)

And even with all of that other crap going through my head, the one thing I really come away thinking is that Jo is a piece of crap because apparently she can write both fiction AND non fiction.

I took a creative non fiction class in college. I was a senior and the next semester I would take my senior project class which involved Fiction writing and then a semester after that (because I needed 4.5 years to get enough credits to graduate so my last semester was filled with pure fun stuff including beginning fiction writing which I had skipped over originally when I went straight to intermediate fiction writing. Talk about an easy class. Beginning Fiction I mean) I would take an MFA fiction writing class even though I wasn't working on an MFA.

I'm totally losing myself in my own train of thoughts here. Anyway I took a single creative non fiction class. And I was HORRIBLE at it. Not only was I horrible at it, I didn't find it very fun. I didn't have anything worth writing about. And I didn't even want to write about me and my past - booooring - I wanted to write about made up crap.

The weird part is, I knew HOW to write good non fiction - I could recognize it when my classmates did it, and I could appreciate a good memoir. But for the life of me I just couldn't apply that to my own writing. I think a lot of the people in the class thought I was dumbish and couldn't believe my major emphasis was in creative writing (I know this is at least partially true because one of the girls in that class would also be in my senior project class which was fiction based and she flat out told me that my fiction was world's better than my non fiction.) My non-fiction work is the only writing that I've willfully destroyed.

I wonder if other writers have this trouble, or if it's just me? I'm not great at poetry, either, but I can pull some of it off. But not Jo March, ho no. Jo can write anything and everything and get it all published while simultaneously finding herself a man. Apparently she's like the Avatar of writers.



I would give much to be an airbender



So anyway, here's what all this rambling comes to: Little Women, I love you, but Jo March can suck it.

27 comments:

Anne Ahiers said...

correction for you:
it was Rachel, not Monica. and it was The Shining, not IT

Blammo

Anne Gallagher said...

On my best day it was 14K and I crawled into bed after that for two days because my hands and butt were cramped. As for Gabriel Byrne, not even close. So yeah, Jo March can suck it.

Love the post, Sarah.

Slamdunk said...

Ha, good rerun.

I think you should always emphasize the superior quality of the 300 words--so that any time spent elsewhere is acceptable.

Kimberlee Turley said...

Just saw a rerun of the Simpsons where Bart was reading Little Women to a bunch of bullies.

I'm thinking I've got to bump this to the top of my list now since... I've only watched the movie--years and years ago.

Unknown said...

I forgot that Jo wrote the book in one night. I share the frustration with Non-fiction. I took a creative nonfiction essay class a couple years ago and the class left me feeling like I'd never written before.

Ninja Girl said...

Hey,
Totally hated Jo for a while after I first saw the movie. I was so mad at her for not picking Laurie >:( I mean, the other guy was handsome and worldly, but it's like Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables. Jo's strong and willful like her, and he might not have proposed at the right time, but I hate that Laurie's awesome character ended up w/Amy. Why do some stories never end as they should? And that is why I love Anne Shirley more than Jo March. She broke a slate over Gilbert's head, was stupid enough to deny him, but then (finally) fell for him right back and chose Gilbert in the end. Rant over ;)
Hope you have a great weekend,
Ninja Girl

Ninja Girl said...

P.S. I did read your post and know it's about writing not about Jo not choosing Laurie, but...what can I say? I'm still not over it :/
Ninja Girl

LD Masterson said...

May I suggest you watch one of the earlier movie versions. I recommend the Katherine Hepburn one. It would change your prespective on the story.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Watching it and having that revelation didn't freak you out so bad you had to put the TV in the fridge, did it?

Lydia Kang said...

You know, Anne Shirley (of AOGG) was like that. She got reamed for writing romance, and people told her, "write what's real." So she did, and got published.

I say write whatever! The audience will come if you're passionate enough.

Awesome post!

Thanks so much for joining the Blogfest!

DL Hammons said...

Wrote a book in one night?!?! Such a slap in the face to real authors everywhere!

You picked a good one Sarah! Thanks for taking part!! :)

vic caswell said...

ohmygoodness. i am SO with Anne. that was all i could focus on for a moment... it was RACHEL! :P
but that's only because i always think of that friends episode when i think of little women as well. and it did always bug me that her scary stories were supposed to be inferior or whatever. blech on you, mr. baeher (sp?)!!!!

i really do love LITTLE WOMEN though. one of my faves. i forgot she wrote the book overnight though... i wonder if she did in the novel, or if that was a movie thing...

i've read it like five times, but i sure don't remember that.

Colin Smith said...

Well, for a start, you DO write non-fiction. It's called YOUR BLOG! :) And you do it quite well. I suck at poetry, and I don't really appreciate it as much as I probably should--there's possibly a correlation there I should ponder sometime.

And isn't it interesting that we still refer to recording on the DVR as "taping."

LynNerdKelley said...

I can write non fiction, too, but I'd much rather write fiction. I love your humor. And I never saw that episode of Friends. Sounds like a good one!

Sarah said...

I've never tried to write non-fiction, unless you count my psychological evaluations and some scholarly articles (but if you expect non-fic to be interesting ... those don't count). I just write what I want to write (which is all fiction), and bleh to the rest. Funny post--I liked your twisty thoughts (and also, the pic of Christian Bale)!

Lost_without_a_Map said...

lol...You said, "I'm totally losing myself in my own train of thoughts here." And I was thinking the same thing as I was reading it =D I'm coming back, tonight, when I am drinking something stronger than coffee to see if I can keep up with you...

Margo Kelly said...

I'm a new follower from the DejaVu Blogfest. Nice to meet you!

and, I think I am your 400th follower! YAY! :0)

Elizabeth said...

Stop by my blog if you like for an e-book giveaway.

NEW FOLLOWER

Elizabeth

http://silversolara.blogspot.com

Carolina M. Valdez Schneider said...

I love this post so much.

Okay, so that was an awesome Friends episode, recapped quite nicely, by the way. And Little Women is awesome, and Jo is crap because really, who can write both nonfiction and fiction and an entire novel in one night? Seriously. But Little Women is still awesome.

I probably would pass on the airbending. But that's just me. I'd rather bend hormones. Or, like, my husband's strong will.

Catherine Stine said...

I'll have to get my hands on a DVD of Little Women and watch it wearing my most colorful sweat pants.

LisaAnn said...

"Even though BETH HAD JUST DIED and IT WAS NOT STUPID!" Ha! Love this!

And YES, I totally struggle with non-fiction. I have a minor in Magazine Journalism, and I hated the fact that I couldn't make up the good parts in my interviews. Like, "But maybe he COULD have been staring at the ocean thinking about his upcoming season as surf team captain. So what if I really interviewed him in a classroom? Which one sounds better, people???"

Jessica Silva said...

I could never write NF. ever. I have no hopes to, either. so that dream sank before it even got in the water. on the other side, I have a lot of shows I follow that I only watch in one batch once or twice a month :) I get no writing done that day, but it's nice to relax and have time off, enjoy someone ELSE'S creativity for once!

LTM said...

Ahh, Avatar. ROCK. ON. You and I have the same lunch habit--and it's funny b/c I just read a Little Women post today about Jo's writing. But it wasn't deja vu. Or maybe I'M having deja vu???

Anyway, love this post. I also think of Friends when I think of LW, and I also don't like Dr. Baher. OK, you didn't say that. But I just did. Still mad she's not w/Laurie. :D <3

Lola Sharp said...

Wasn't Bale too cute in that movie? He was so young...and blondish. I have seen that movie so many times. (I love Jo...and Winona)

Airbender! (THAT version...NOT the Version That Shall be Unnamed)

Happy Holiday Huggles,
L

Theresa Milstein said...

I haven't seen this movie. Maybe I should look it up.

Austin Gorton said...

@Anne: correction for you:
it was Rachel, not Monica. and it was The Shining, not IT


You know, I remember reading this post the first time out, but I have no idea how I could have possibly let those errors go without correcting them. But apparently I did...

Michael Offutt, Phantom Reader said...

Christian Bale is so good looking. I'd love to be locked in a room with him in it and he was forced to be shirtless.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...