A Confluence

I've been revising my middle-grade novel. With my kids out of school, it's been tricky finding the quiet I need. On the flip side, having them around has also created otherwise missed opportunities.

We rented a cartoon for a family movie night. It was cute and the kids enjoyed it. I did to, but it wasn't one I wanted to rush out and buy or even watch again. Contrast that with Pixar films, Monster's University being my favorite, and my mind began to ping-pong between the two. I started to wonder how Pixar is able to create such solid, timeless and cross-generationally appealing scripts. 

My husband and I also rented a movie for us. It was a low-budget film to be fair but the script was a tragic missed opportunity--too many deus ex machina moments and one-dimensional characters. I loved it though because it forced me to take a hard look at my novel and see things with a more critical eye. 

I also picked up a book I thought my daughter would like--Bunnicula, by James Howe. Of course I started reading it first. I'm enjoying his whit and tight sentence structure. He wraps a lot of humor and character development in tiny, tidy sentence packages.

To top it off, I received my copy of One, by Kathryn Otoshi a few days ago. Every time I read it, I find something new to blow my mind. It reaches a level of picture book perfection that's almost impossible to achieve. Kathryn did work in the film industry so I wonder how much of her work with scripts, both good and not so good, informed her ability to craft such solid material. There is something to be said about learning from successes and mistakes.

Needless to say, all of these events crammed in a short space of time tricked my mind over some of its dead ends. Here's hoping for more.