Shutter Island in Myrtle Beach

Packing up for our last night in Myrtle Beach. (Insert sad face here.) I was going to write about Medieval Times, the cheezee jousting/dining extravaganza, but letting the husbands take the boys seemed like a better idea, while us women took the girls to a Hula and Fire show. Also cheeze-ridden, but is not sparking an idea for tonight's short Lit.Life post.

So, I'll write about last night, which sparked several things, but there's no way I can fit them all in tonight in the half hour I've designated to write this.

"And what's with the cartoon?" You ask. "Trying to get out of what?"

Trying to get out of his mind . . .

Husband and I, on the occasion of our anniversary, went out to dinner and a movie.
We saw Shutter Island. I had read and enjoyed the book by Dennis Lehane about five years ago - but that summer I had been binging on this author, and devouring the lexicon of his work. So it's safe to say that I didn't remember the plot exactly. Does this happen to anyone else? Reading so much that you have to work really hard to remember a certain piece?

I don't love horror, or even the idea of being scared, but I love unreliable narrators in psychological thrillers. Shutter Island did not disappoint in this regard, and I'm glad that I had almost "forgotten" the book, but then again, maybe it didn't blow me away as much as it could have because somewhere in my subconscious, I knew what to expect. I wasn't on the edge of my seat the way I was with Fight Club, or Donnie Darko, two of my favorite movies ever. (Although Fight Club I refused to see on the big screen because I was afraid of the violence.)

Thanks for reading my sophomoric effort tonight! Sweet dreams y'all.

A Road Trip and Sense Memory

Two days road-tripping from NYC to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, have left me wondering how on earth I'm going to blog and tie everything back to something writerly. I didn't read or write anything, but I listened to A LOT of music, which brings me to tonight's topic: SENSE MEMORY.

In my acting days, Music served as a prop to get me into a certain emotional state of being. Music would help me "remember"; music was my madeleine, (the cookie that aroused Proust in his Remembrance of Things Past) and access the past to be used for the present.

Writing is no different. I am a fiction writer, and I have to put my heart and soul into my writing for there to be truth in it.

Our playlist and forward motion in the car opened an undulation of feeling: Glen's Danzig and Campbell, The White Stripes, Michelle Shocked, Prince, Lyle Lovett, the B52's, Everlast, Iggy Pop . . .

I thought about the other week when I was struggling to finish the first draft of WIP. I had been having such a hard time with the ending, and having my two protagonists realize their feelings for each other was like pulling teeth. On a beautiful sunny day in the city, I went for a walk with my I-POD and played LOVE SONG by The Cure, over and over again. I got into this state of first love. The song reminded me of my boyfriend in Italy when I was 19, and how intense it was. I felt like I was 19 again - the best part of 19. Over the next few days I finished my first draft. Which, as you know, will only be the first of many.

Here in South Carolina, I had fantasized about listening to LOVE SONG and dancing on the beach by myself, but the feeling of young, impassioned love has been replaced with the grounded joy I feel sharing a life with my husband and children: but I know that I have access to my adolescence with the click of a button.