Character Skillets

"Your dream stinks.  I was talking to her."
I was watching Tangled last night--again. That's Disney's latest retelling of an old fairy tale. The first time I watched it I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.  It's a familiar story but a delightfully unexpected version.
Tangled has all the things a good story needs: a damsel in distress, a slightly flawed hero, an evil witch, a horse, and an iron skillet. They called it a frying pan but anybody from the South can look at it and know what it is.
The skillet is one of the unexpected finds.  As is the horse. Then there's the one handed thief who wants to be a concert pianist and the mime.
That's the kind of stories I want to write: those that give the reader something they didn't expect, but they enjoy.  Whether it's seeing an old flame riding in Angola's prison rodeo, taking a date to a Klan rally for extra credit, or spending spring break with desperate house wives and vampires, it's taking the mundane every day stories and giving them to the odd and dysfunctional. I mean, even homicidal cat ladies need love too.  What better place to find it than the rope section of Home Depot with a troubled guy buying a shovel to bury his girlfriend?
Probably not what Disney had in mind, but it's putting our own spin on themes we all know. That's what's fun about writing.  You don't have to follow a formula to write what you enjoy.  You can tell the most inane stories or the most tragic or funny.  Or all of it. Your writing is your own.
As writers we see things with a unique perspective.  Then we tell it's story with our own interpretation.  Sometimes it's serious business, but I like to give it a quirky twist.

Following Myself

Ok, so this is funny--somehow I hit a wrong button and I now follow my own page.  Ha Ha.  I wonder what I'll say next?  
It's two days after Christmas and I had a wonderful time with my family.  The plan for the siblings not to buy each other presents was a good one.  It took a lot of stress off everyone. We could enjoy spending time with each other---and play with the Xbox 360 my nephew got! We were able to focus on why we were celebrating Christmas and not the stuff.
2011 is shaping up to end well, and now I'm looking foreward to what 2012 has to offer. Good things, I'm praying.  I'm still working on my resolution to be more thankful, but I'm also with Sylvia on the being more organized.  That would be awesome!
Happy New Year to All!

Early Resolutions

One of my New Year's resoultions is to be more appreciative of things.  You know, being more grateful for what I have. I thought of it on Thanksgiving--no suprise there--and thought "why should I wait until 2012?  Why not start now?" 
So I got a blank journal off the shelf and started writing five things I'm thankful for each day. I thought surely this would be easy, but it's turned out to be harder than I expected.  Once you get past the big things like a job, family, friends, and health, it's difficult to say what you appreciate. 
I've found myself thinking of all sorts of things:  English murder mysteries, remote controls, Christmas lights and i-phones. When my computer got a virus I was thankful for Geek Squad for fixing it.  I learned how much I appreciate technology when I didn't have it.
The good and bad of it is I look around at all I have and realize how truly blessed I am.  Good because I've been more content with what I have.  Bad because when people say "what do you want for Christmas" I have to answer "Nothing, really.  I don't need anything." It makes it hard to shop because we have so much already it's hard to want to buy more stuff.  As I buy presents I stop and consider "is this something they will want?" or am I buying it just because I think I have to get something for others?
If you think about it, putting Thanksgiving at the beginning of the holiday season is a good thing.  It should put us in the right frame of mind for celebrating Christmas and it's true meaning.