They Do It With Mirrors - Agatha Christie

Jogo de Espelhos (They do It With Mirrors)
Agatha Christie
Asa

Mistery
176 pages

I generally love Agatha Christie, and I tend to read her books in one sitting, but that didn't happen with this one.

It's a Marple novel, and I generally do prefer other detectives (it just frustrates me that part of the solution is based on those comparisons with someone on St. Mary Mead), but I don't think that's enough to explain why this book failed to captivate me the way others have.

I think part of it was that I just didn't care about the characters all that much. I especially didn't care at all about the victim, since he practically just walked in and got killed, and there was very little to know about him. I also didn't especially care for the person they were supposedly all trying to protect: she's one of those older ladies Christie writes somethimes, very nice and very vague and very ethereal.

Also, it seemed to me that Christie's tendency to write mostly dialogue was taken a bit too far on this one, and instead of a fast-paced but rich reading, which is her usual, we're definitely entering "talking head" territory.

So, this one might actually be a rarity among my Christie collection: a book that I won't be rereading.

Hearts West - Chris Enss

Hearts West: True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier
Chris Enss
Twodot

115 pages
Non-Fiction

I really enjoyed this book. I bought it as research for a future project, but ended up losing myself completely in its pages.

As the subtitle states, the book is composed of several stories of women and men who met through correspondance during the second half of the XIXth century and the first two decades of the XXth. Each chapter tells a different story with a few of them dedicated not to specific couples, but to people or institutions that helped bring those couples together. There's a good selection of stories, they cover people in different situations and not all of them have happy outcomes.

I loved that the book includes a lot of material from the time: journal and letters excerpts; personal ads; newspaper articles; photographs and prints. It also includes a rather detailed bibliography (which non-fiction books don't always seem to do anymore) that I think will be of good use to me when I'm in full research mode for the project I mentioned.

Also, the book really opened my eyes to how many preconceived ideas I still held about life in the West and the role of women in the expansion.

Amazon.co.uk
Book Depository

February

January didn't go as well as planned, but I did manage to start writting more consistently, and I did figure out some adjustments I need to make to increase my productivity.

The first draft to Coração de Lobo still needs some work. There are still a lot of places that read something like [BATTLE SCENE] or [MORE DESCRIPTION] that I'll need to fill out.

Anyway, February will be a busy, busy month for me.

1. Write 25/28 days
2. Chant gongyo every morning - 28 tasks
3. Complete the first edit pass of CDL
4. Do one Japanese lesson per week - 4 tasks
5. Exercise once a week - 4 tasks
6. Listen to Sleep CD every night - 28 tasks
7. Lose 2 Kg

Boredom

One of the questions people ask me more frequently when they find out I write (aside from "Oh, really?!") is where I get ideas from. My usual answer is that ideas come from everywhere, from all I see, from all I read, from whatever new things I learn.

It's a good answer, but I realised today that it's not the right one, or at least not the whole answer.

The bank of data that I've been collecting certainly has an important part in the creation of ideas and in the writing process itself. After all, nothing comes from nothing and I think all of those who like to read know that author with little diversified knowledge tend to produice hollow and repetitive books.

However, there has to be something other to trigger the process, something that binds notions and pieces of information hitherto distinct to form what may be the seed of a story.

In my case, I am now firmly convinced, that thing is boredom. Which explains why so many of the ideas I've had over the years have come to me in waiting rooms, or during long trips or dull classes...

The brain becomes bored and starts playing with what it's storing, overlapping things, cutting them and shuflling them. Many times, the result is nonsense, but there are useful things coming from these moments: the resolution to a flaw in our current project, a detail that will add another dimension to the story, a turn of phrase that charms us.

And, on occasion, that idea comes: the one that excites us and makes us want to drop whatever we're doing and write until we're forced to stop.

January

GOALS

1. Writing: 25/31 days
2. Gongyo: 62 times
3. Complete first draft of CDL
4. Lose 2 Kg
5. 2 blog updates

Plans for 2010

2009 wasn't a very productive year writing-wise, I was pretty much all over the place: worked on a lot of projects, made little progress on most of them. I'll need more structure for 2010.

RESOLUTIONS
1. Write a minimum of 25 days per month
2. Chant daimoku or do gongyo twice a day
3. Exercise regularly (and that doesn't mean twice a year! )
4. Eat better

GOALS

Writing
1. Complete Coração de Lobo and send it to my publisher (deadline: end of March)
2. Complete Black Box and submit it to Scriptapalooza TV (deadline: April 15th)
3. Complete at least one other project
4. Do a SAD challenge
5. Update blog twice a month

Personal
1. Lose 15 Kg
2. Get one item from my Things To Learn list done

Black Box Soundtrack

Needed a break, so I just spent half an hour setting up a playlist to listen to while I'm working on Black Box:

The Last Time I saw William - Allanah Myles
Things Don't Always Turn Out That Way - The Calling
My Hero - Foo Fighters
Suddenly I See - KT Tunstall
Restolho - Mafalda Veiga
Feeling Good - Michael Bublé
Turn Me On - Norah Jones
I Will Remember You - Sarah McLachlan
Hold On - Sarah McLachlan
Land of a Thousand Words - Scissor Sisters
Soft Serve - Soul Coughing
Fool For Love - Brian Ferry
When You Come Back - Drivin' N' Cryin'
One More Murder - Better Than Ezra
Fairy Tale - Shaman
Anima - Milton Nascimento
Red Right Hand - Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds

A bit... schizophrenic, I know, but it's actually perfect for what I have in mind.