Saturday, August 27, 2005

Rent the movie, PLAIN DIRTY

In the past week, I have caught the movie PLAIN DIRTY on cable two times, and each time, I was enthralled by it.

Set in Louisiana, PLAIN DIRTY is about a Inez Macbeth, a young married woman who practically lives in the swamplands with her husband, Edgar. When her feelings toward her husband go south, she begins to have an affair with a wealthy lawyer. Edgar finds out and begins to brutalize Inez, beating her and keeping her locked up in the home. He has his best friend, Flowers watch Inez when he goes away from the home, and a friendship of sorts grows between Flowers and Inez, a friendship with murderous and possibly romantic intentions.

To say I was captivated by this movie is an understatement. The soundtrack was perfect for the film, and the acting was superb. What intrigued me the most is how distinct and well-rounded these three main characters are.

Edgar, a petty thief with aspirations of improving his lot, abuses Inez when he finds out that she's having an affair. Despite this, one can't help but to feel for him. He wants better. He wants better for not only him, but for Inez as well. It tortures him to know that Inez chose a well-off man over him. It kills him that he can't be a better man, that he has to be looked down upon by those in the community. Though you will hate him for his actions, somewhere, deep in places we you may not want to talk about, you may petty him, even feel for him.

Inez is an interesting character. She's young. Feisty. Scared. We can see that she is lonely. With her loneliness and her station in life, we can see why she might have chosen to have an affair, especially an affair with a wealthy man. To her, this means that she has arrived; she is somebody. We understand why she wants to leave when Edgar becomes abusive. We can empathize with her hatred and her vengeful ways and her frightened realizations that she could get in trouble for the wrongs she has made.

Then there's Flowers, my favorite character. He's quiet. He's faithful, first to Edgar, and then to Inez. He does love Edgar, but his love for Inez is what causes him to set particular plans in motion within the story. As a police woman says to Flowers in the story, he is the eyes and ears of the community; he is the person that ultimately, can destroy people...or help them. That only makes him a damn interesting character.

PLAIN DIRTY has strong, poetic dialogue. There were several times I had to pause, repeat what was said, and go, "Mmm." I felt those words in my gut and heart. They felt right to this story.

Though I did, at times, have an issue with the slipping in and out of dialect for the main characters, I have to say that, that is a small price to pay for a movie as moving and disturbing and lovely as PLAIN DIRTY.

You definitely want to check it out.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

ISO :: Sites on the industry of women's fiction

Today is an off day. School starts back up Monday. None too thrilled, but it pays the bills.

I'm blogging because I NEED ASSISTANCE, PLEASE. If you know of sites that cater to women's fiction (and almost all that THAT implies, romance, chick lit, mysteries, etc...), could you please e-mail me at chicklitgurrl@hotmail.com? For the last couple of days I've been thinking about the industry and wanted to know if there were places that concentrated on who's buying, who's selling, who's looking, which editors are interested, which editors are moving and becoming agents, etc...

I belong to a few AWESOME groups, but I am always on the look out for more information. :-)

Thanks in Advance!

Sunday, August 14, 2005

The White Room :: a short short :: make comments!

The white room is lovely. Really. It is. White. Overwhite. If something could be so. White enough to make your retinas spasm from the brightness. Four, bright, white walls. Not ecru or ivory, or antique. White. Beyond virginal white. A white so bright that it must have its own life. At night, I can feel the white, breathing. Staring at me. Through my closed eyelids, I feel its something-nothing. How could something so blank have so much life? And yet, it does.

I live in this room. Shuffling from wall to wall in my pink, fuzzy slippers. My white gown is paper thin, and at times, like now, I have to wear my white long johns with their pink flowers in bloom. Six months. Six months I've been here. In this living, breathing room. As if the walls aren't white enough, three bars of fluorescent lights cling to the ceiling, glaring its heated light at me, and then boomeranging off the walls to hit me at all angles.

In this white room, my brown skin looks ashy. Dry. Lifeless. It probably is. Seven hours a day, I leave the white room. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Three hours. Reading and Recreation. Two hours. Counseling. One hour. Group Counseling. One hour. All this to reconnect the scattered pieces of my life. I never told them that one huge piece, right in the center, had been missing for a long time.



At 30, I had a son. Beautiful boy. Horrible postpartum. Hated him. My husband. Myself. Spent too much time crying about being a mother. My hate turned to regret three weeks later. Beautiful baby boy died. SIDS. Regret chewed on my insides. Husband tried to comfort me, but the more he did, the worse I felt and the more I hated him.

I tried to write my pain away. I am. Was a writer. Did well for myself. Enough accolades to refill my heart and soul with love, but my heart was locked up (unlike the problems I let fester around me). This isn't going to sell, the hubby told me in whispers, which turned to full voice, which then turned to stern voice (with slight shoulder shaking), which ended with yelling (and one slap to my face). No one cares about this. This is your life. Who cares?

He sold insurance. As artistic as these white walls I stare at 17 hours a day. He didn't know that writing wasn't about making money. It was about releasing a problem that settles between your muscles and takes root. It's about finding that problem and writing it out until your muscles loosen and the tension in your mind goes away. I didn't plan to sell my thoughts. My heart on paper. But, I knew that I could never write another good word until these bad words were out.

Days, weeks, months passed. I pushed it back. When my breasts leaked milk, I pushed it back. When they ached for suckling, I pushed it back. When I passed my baby’s nursery, since locked off, I pushed it back. When I thought about how my mother lost her mind trying to push back her feelings, I pushed it back. I lost weight. I was too full from pushing back emotions, from making sure I wrote to make money, from keeping my hubby from yelling at me.

I vomited. The pushing back of emotions lodged in my throat, choking me. Needing to be released. The pushing back had to be released. And I did. Release it.

Stepped into a tub full of water. Rested my head back. Closed my eyes tight. Cool tears mixed with sweat. Soft rip of skin as the razor slashed my wrists open. Blood mingled with tepid water. My life draining from my wrists. Alert. Scared. Calm. Dreamy. Lost. Before darkness enveloped me, I remembered the upturn of my lips. The bloody water rising to my chin. My lips. My nostrils, as I slipped under.



The white room helps me regain myself. They say. I say, "White room = Hubby." Sterile and technical. Unfeeling. "Pink, fuzzy slippers + pink flowers in bloom on long johns = Baby." Soft. Secure. With me.

My demons slipped out with the blood, they tell me. I'm clean.

Psychotherapy. Group Counseling. Role Playing. I'm getting full.

No outlet but these four white, damning walls. They are healing me.

White-walled hubby. Pink, fuzzy baby. Purge.

I feel like I'm dying.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Rewriting the Ex-Factor :: a story

Rewriting the Ex-Factor



I spit chocolate caramel latte into the face of a man I thought I would never see again. He grabs a napkin from my table and wipes at his honey-colored skin, catching the latte before it drips from his chin and onto his charcoal Armani suit.

“I knew it was you,” he says with lips I remember traipsing along my neck. Toothpaste-perfected teeth gleam at me.

In one whole second, I manage to go from a nervous woman who hopes her blind lunch date will be the man of her dreams, to a dribbling mute who believes she must have dated every man in New York—and consequently forgotten them—in order to get back to Chuck, the ex-love of her life.

Let me back track. About four years ago, at the age of 25, I was in love. I gave up my job as an assistant editor in order to follow Chuck across the globe. You see, he couldn’t stand to be without me, and he made more than enough to support us. I cut my hair short because he felt women wore their hair long to compensate for some outer flaw. In his opinion, I was flawless. So, off with the hair. I took up biking and running and died through four marathons for Chuck. I stopped calling my mother weekly, for Chuck. Calling more than once a month showed dependency. He didn’t like dependency, unless it was to him. It was my dependency that moved him to another woman—Sarah, my used-to-be friend—while we were still together. If you fast forward three years, ten months, and two days—not that I’m counting, you will find a voluptuous and highly opinionated woman sitting at a table, with her mouth still open and a dash of whipped cream on her chin, watching as Chuck Peterson reenters her life and sits down at her table, all without removing his bright smile.

To read the rest, head to my new personal website, ChickLitGurrl.com, and then bounce back over here and tell me what you think! :-)

Friday, August 05, 2005

Screenplay treatment almost done!

Today, my friend Bill and I should be done our screenplay treatment. It's the first "writing" thing I've done in a while. Bill told me I can't say I haven't been creative because I'm constantly coming up with new story and book ideas. SO now, I'm not going to say I haven't been creative; I'm going to say I haven't been writing. And now, I HAVE! Bill and I spend several hours, two days a week, hashing out scenes, and during our down time, I've been writing out our discussion with some kind of cohesion. I have to say I really enjoy this. The story is hilarious, and I think, God forbid, it could actually sell.

Now, if I could just get back into my own writing. IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE who can offer suggestions to jumpstart my writing? I think my biggest hurdle is that there's this negative little mini-me that constantly says, "Why are you doing this? Have you sold your OTHER solo works yet?" With me trying to battle that voice, I'm oftentimes too tired to be motivated to THINK about writing. HELP, PLEASE.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Busy. As usual.

Hey Gang!

I hope you all enjoyed my interview with Carly Phillips! I will be interviewing Ms. Danyel Smith, author of MORE LIKE WRESTLING and the new BLISS in a few weeks.

If you haven't been to The Nubian Chronicles and SisterDivas magazines, you need to. They are HOT (links are to your right). We (we being Into the Spotlight Entertainment and our sister organization, Da Wind Down) are in the process of organizing a women's conference for 2006. More information coming on that soon!

I've also been creative the last two weeks. Me and my bud Bill are about 1/3 of the way through a rough treatment of our script. If I do say so myself, the movie is funny and sad as hell. Working on it has gotten me geared to work on a solo project.

N.E.way, I'm gonna flee. It's late, and I may actually go to bed. Having coffee tomorrow with a friend, and I may attempt to get a little writing done, along with beginning my preparations for fall classes.

PeAcE