From One Small Town to Another

Posted on March 31, 2009 by MAL

Freedom

Me in the Middle of Stokenchurch (not really!)

Currently located in Stokenchurch, just an hour outside of London by train. Staying at the King’s Hotel – the most famous thing about this town. Apparently, King Charles II stayed here with his mistress in the 17th Century. I certainly feel like a mistress here since I have to hide from the hotel staff. I wasn’t prebooked in advance to stay in the same room as my boyfriend, so they wanted to charge us extra – which would have meant charging his company extra. Forget that!

Jocko is training all week with his new company, and for me, rather than staying at his parent’s house alone, I opted to go with him and bunk up in the hotel. We drove here first thing yesterday – and when I say first thing, I mean the earliest we have seen the sun in 4 months – and I got dropped off at the nearest town of High Wycombe. I had to be dropped off because we couldn’t check into the hotel room yet, and there is literally 2 pubs, a church, and a library in Stokenchurch. High Wycombe isn’t much better, but at least there are some cobblestones and a bit of a mall there. I have a new fondness for Marks and Spencer – a store that has everything. Like Natalie Portman did in that movie where she lived in Walmart, one could literally live in Marks and Spencer. There is a grocery store, high end clothing lines, and a cafe! What more could a girl want?

I spent the first hour in the cafe writing more of my book outline. The main thing I’m trying to do is filter out the more important events of the last year and figure out their significance in the overall context of the book. This is important for me to do because I’m finding that if I just sit down to write with no plan than I critique every thing I’m writing. I end up writing 3 pages and then rereading it and thinking – who cares? What does this have to do with anything, and who wants to read this garbage?

For the next 7 hours, I walked around High Wycombe – and around and around and around. And I found out an interesting fact – High Wycombe is the only town in the world that has a custom of weighing its Mayor every year. And, well, that’s about everything interesting that I found.

Today was much better. I spent most of the day writing, and took a nice walk in the smaller more rural town of Stokenchurch. I walked for about an hour and a half trying to work out more of the structure of the first 1/4 of my book. It’s amazing how far away your mind can go when thinking about stories.

I also finished my first blog on this new website where I will be a contributor: http://www.blab.tv . My writer’s name is “meagan lopez” – clever, I know!

4 Days Left…

Posted on March 26, 2009 by MAL

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The Parent’s Home

I’m starting to get that nervous feeling like I get the week before a show opens. Now that I know I only have 4 days left of lounging about, and in 4 days I will be starting my novel, I’m feeling nervous that I’ll sit down to write, and nothing will come of it. Just like when a show is about to open, and my biggest fear is that I won’t remember any of my lines. I’ve thought and thought about this book for the past 4 months, and here we are almost in ACTION time, and I can’t help but feel that thought of “What if I don’t finish it? Or even worse, what if I don’t start it?”

The truth is, I know I will, and I know it will be good. I have done so much research, I have laid in bed every night going over and over the plot in my mind, and I have lived it. How else to prepare?

I will have to find out. I am also very excited to be starting a life. We have been in that space between life and non-life for too long that drinking has become off limits. I think I have so much bottled up inside of me that everytime I have even one drink, I get this incredible sensation to hit something or scream at the top of my lungs – and, quite frankly, this is not a good way to make new friends in a foreign country.

So, writing will become my way of living – through the characters, their thoughts, and their actions. You better believe, they are going to be full of life, full of heart, and just…well, just FULL – not in the eating constantly way, but in the way that gives someone a rounded existence. I think just having an objective again, a reason to wake up in the morning, une raison d’etre will be enough to jump start this. Heck, just living alone will be enough to celebrate with a good opening chapter in my book!

Today is Thursday (half way through Thursday) – just have to get through Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Friday – wake up around 10AM, drink tea, eat apple, go for run. Shower, get dressed, respond to some emails, and watch Music and Lyrics while eating some lunch. Then what? Talk to some people on Skype, and hopefully dinner will be ready by then…

Saturday – Jock’s car arrives!!!! Maybe go for a spin? Do some running, and eat take away with boyfriend’s parents.

Sunday – PACKING!!! And more packing and more packing and more….maybe run, maybe be bored, and day dream about the next day of freedom, weight loss and writing…Sunday roast will be cooked by boyfriend’s mother.

I think this is highly doable!!

On another note, what is the UK thinking by monitoring Facebook sites?? Thanks Eileen for sending this – I’m deleting my profile…it’s all a bit creepy for me.

Jock just got back from running, and has all my laundry in his hands (I guess he started a load on his way out?). He’s so good – and I should be getting back to my boring next couple of days anyway. Ho Hum.

The Beginning of the Beginning

Posted on March 16, 2009 by MAL

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I started writing last night. I got a bug at about 2AM and I couldn’t go to sleep because I had a sudden realization of how the book will begin.

I’ve been doing all this research on authors writing the same sort of stories I plan on writing, and just am reading as much as I can to figure out what I feel works and doesn’t. Although I know the subject I’m going to write about, I had no idea where to begin, and I felt research would help guide me in the right direction. It’s amazing how many young female authors there are that are really popular right now.

I think the biggest piece of advice was found on Cecelia Ahern’s website. I ordered a book of hers online called Thanks for the Memories, and when I received it, I realized she was the author of P.S. I Love You, which happens to be one of my favorite moves of all time. I didn’t even know that was a book, let alone a young female author had written it! Not only did she write that, but she is also the creator of Samantha Who? starring Christina Applegate. It’s so nice to see women who are multi-talented, and bringing strong female leads to the cinema and television. Right, so this is the advice she writes to aspiring writers about how to start a book:

“Find the environment that suits you to write. Silence is an inspiration to me. Space is so important. Left alone for an hour, my mind starts to create. Scenes begin to fill the empty spaces and the sounds of those scenes and characters voices fill the silences. My belief is that if you wake up in the morning, or in the middle of the night, and all you want to do is write, then you’re a writer. There is no magic formula to being a writer and there is no magic formula to writing a book. It’s something that comes from deep inside that cannot be taught in any writing class….

You have to introduce your characters, you have to set up the story, you have to embark on the story, travel through the story, allow your characters to often lead the way, then you reach your destination that should feel right without having taken any short cuts or U-turns or circles and then end it when the journey’s complete.
I think that aspiring writers should find their own voice, don’t try to repeat what is already done because it seems to be successful, do your own thing. Don’t be afraid to do something different.”

I am so excited to have my own space and my own silence to find that time. It seems to me that writing is a lot like acting, only you get to find more than one character at a time. I can not wait to really get into the journey. Just as in acting there are no shortcuts, it seems that writing will teach me again to go through the journey one step at a time. We are so often probed to get a result, get a product…when will I learn that it’s the process that counts?

Theatre, Deal or No Deal and Books

Posted on March 10, 2009 by MAL

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Here we are three weeks before we move to Bristol. I have started doing research on Theatre in Bristol and have found this great website with detailed descriptions of the current events of Theatre in Bristol. I found that the writer of Mamma Mia is from there and has just produced a play that opens this month! My major goal is to write of course, but I can’t help but keep up to date on the theatre in town.

Plus, I know there are tons of tv shows that are filmed there (not to mention tons of BBC shows and Deal or No Deal!).

Speaking of Deal or No Deal, I’m trying to get Jock to go on the show. Ok, I have just been on their website FAQ, and have found out that they are no longer accepting submissions, but at least now I know the process. See below:

Q13. How can I become a contestant on the show?
Firstly you need to fill in an application form online.
If you are successful at this stage, you will be invited to an audition and awarded a bronze ticket.
The audition is in two stages. If you are selected to go through to the second stage you will be given a silver ticket and be interviewed on camera by a member of the team.
These tapes will then be viewed in a casting session where the producers will choose the final contestants. If you have a place on the show you will be given a golden ticket.

Applications for Deal or No Deal is now CLOSED.

At the very least, we know he has the personality! Man, I just took the Banker’s Respect Challenge and apparently I’m average! This is what the quiz had to say about me:

Have the words “must try harder” ever appeared on your school reports? Your profile suggests you may have some aptitude but you have still to learn the subtleties of risk, reward and timing that could make you a winner…. -Blah, blah, blah – How rude is that?? Albeit, yes, things have tended to come easy to me, so I did get the assessment of “trying harder” in my school reports at times, but the grades never showed it.

The average amount that a contestant wins is in the 30,000GPB range, so how great would that be just for opening some boxes.

You can see how exciting our life is at the moment, with me doing research on Deal or No Deal.

Regarding my book, watched a show last night on BBC2 (see the whole show) about how book publishing, writing and selling has been changed in the past decade. It wasn’t the most optimistic show I’ve seen lately, but I’m focusing more on getting the research done before I start writing, and way before I even think about getting it published. I think my best bet is to do as much reading as I can in the next three weeks in the genre I’m writing so that when April 6th comes, I can buckle down and have fresh ideas in my mind! Also, every night I’m going over the storyline in my head before I go to bed…not the best idea to get a good night’s sleep, but certainly helps me cement good ideas in my mind.

Just ordered two books from Amazon.co.uk to start off with: Thanks for the Memories, by Cecelia Ahern and Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophia Kinsella (who wrote Confessions of a Shopaholic). They seemed to be in the right arena I was looking for, and will be writing in. Will let you know my thoughts!

At the moment, I found this book called Inconceivable by Ben Elton in Jocko’s closet that is hysterical. I’m on page 63 so far out of 367 pages, but I reckon it will be a quick read. Apparently it was made into a film called Maybe Baby that I have never heard of. Doesn’t surprise me in the slightest considering how few British films actually make it out in America. I tried watching a classic British film the other night with Jocko called L4yer Cake with Daniel Craig and, his favorite, Sienna Miller, but I understand why they don’t come out in the US…I couldn’t understand ANYTHING they said and fell asleep. I wanted to understand, I wanted to follow the plot…but there was SOO much going on, I simply couldn’t and got defeated.

I will keep trying…

I See London, I See Spain

Posted on March 5, 2009 by admin

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And somewhat confused?

As much as I’ve loved just lounging around having no aims nor ambitions, anyone who knows me a little bit probably knew that wouldn’t last long. So, I am very much looking forward to moving to Bristol, getting all my suitcases UNpacked, and waking up every morning with a plan. Jock has secured a fine job that he accepted (although there may be another one in the pot), and it starts March 30th! I can’t believe we’ll have been here for over 3 months by then.

As I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and life always works out…even if in peculiar ways, we have also secured a very nice house in the middle of Bristol with a spare bedroom for our visitors – hint hint. And a backyard (or garden as they call it here) to lounge and do some writing. I have yet to see it, but Jocko assures me it is stunning, and very modern. I am also excited for a separate dining room where we can have dinner parties – something I have been dying to do for ages!

Apart from that – we had a whirlwind tour when my sister arrived- complete with trips to London, staying in an apartment across the street from where they were holding the BRIT awards (their Grammy’s) to make me feel a very brief nostalgia for LA (VERY brief), a short trip to Spain where we rented a Spanish Villa for two days in the mountains before sailing off to Barcelona for the rest of the week. We ended the tour back in England at Jock’s parents’ home in Portsmouth.

Her 4 year old in tow was amazing birth control secondly, thirdly a real glimpse of how a 4 year old sees traveling through Europe – only caring about when the next playground will show up and if those kids will pass him the soccer ball; but firstly, a real respect for my sister doing it all on her own. I don’t see how my mom did it with two of us, and I can only imagine that my sister and I were ten times worse than Brayden. It is HARD only having to count on yourself to parent…and Amanda is amazing at it.

The best part of the trip was stumbling upon a tiny restaurant in the small town called Palafrugell. It was one of those days that you hoped you would have when traveling through Spain with the sun just touching your skin enough to warm it and the wind blowing just enough to tousle your hair and not allow for any sweatmarks. It was a Sunday just before a Carnaval finished a few miles from us and the hoards of people were let out. No one was in this town we found except the few stray Spanish cats and dogs, and the lonely sound of the 900 year old church bell. There may have been five buildings and one scooter that passed us as we approached the restaurant.

A nice shortish man (as most Spanish people we came across) came out of the restaurant as we were peering at the menu. The language that Amanda learned in her private school in Mexico didn’t help us much here since they spoke Catalan – a strange mix of Spanish, Portuguese and French it seemed to me. You could tell he was trying to figure out our nationality because he said hello in every language he spoke a bit of. When he got to “Hello!” we perked up, and he said we could sit outside. I was so pleased because the view from outside was that of the mountains and the greenest grass you’ve ever seen.

Instead of going for anything on the menu, we asked that he just bring out his favorite tapas and the best Sangria he had to offer. This proved an excellent choice as I don’t think I’ve ever tasted seafood like that before – calamari that melted, clams that wouldn’t shut up, and prawns that looked at you (no seriously, they still had their eyes attached). Brayden found a small Spanish boy to run around the field with as we dined and wished we were no place but there. We thought we had found a gem, an undiscovered restaurant that was lost next to the churchbell dong; but were proven wrong when the entire Spanish population piled in about an hour after we sat down. It’s just that we had gotten there on American time rather than Spanish time. And the Carnaval was over.

Now, heading downstairs for a cup of tea – trying not to eat after this passage is going to be hard, but after all that traveling, it seems I have gained some weight! So, 15 lbs off ya go!! (Maybe I’ll just think about the prawn eyes staring at me.)

Thank you for reading, and write back. I love hearing how everyone is doing more than you know!

Love,
Meagan