deborahb

Yes, yes, we all love David Mitchell. How can we not? The man’s a bloody genius. For proof: a story about a rat and a divorce. Thank-you, Guardian. I love you.

Today is typically Sydney: both overcast AND muggy.

To compensate I am watching In Treatment Season 2, which is frikking awesome. Maybe more awesome than Season 1, I’m not sure. Only 1 ‘week’ in. Also there’ll be novel revision & roast chicken later today.

I am getting really good at this ‘time off’ thing.

And I have bought my very first moleskin notebook. I couldn’t resist — they now come in pink. Sriously, r they as good as the fans claim they are? I need to know. Two pink notebooks cost me twenty-five bucks!

Hmmm, now what shall I write in them?

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.
— Mark Twain

The trouble is, this is how I’m feeling about Mad Men, the show everyone else raves about. Enough with the fcking smoking & the almost-but-not-quite hilarious misogyny already.

What am I missing?

This morning a good morning on The Great Unsaleable. It’s coming together nicely on this draft. By taking a secondary character and making her more primary, I’ve — unexpectedly — added a layer of logic to the events. This is gratifying & confusing in equal measure. (I’m trying not to question it. Go with it, deborahb, goooooo with it.)

This afternoon, doesn’t bear discussion.

This evening, a glass of red to ease out of the afternoon, two episodes of Burn Notice, time spent staring at The Great Unsaleable, moving pieces about like shifting blocks back and forth on the floor. Perhaps not a lot achieved, but something consolidated. Perhaps that’s just in my head? Afraid to work too much on it in case, in my frustrated/red-wined way, I screw it up.

Watching Burn Notice makes me think it’s time for me to do one of my infamous (ie. not-famous-at-all) livejournal polls. Which you’ll find here.

I’ll start you off. I wish I’d written Burn Notice. Damn, it’s fun!

With some shows, the writers have even engaged in such discussions and it’s possible the reactions of viewers have influenced future episodes. (Although not always: Buffy’s creator Joss Whedon said to his fans, “I’m not giving you what you want – I’m giving you what you need.”)

We’ve heard TV types say that ‘each week we’re making the equivalent to a movie’ (but half an hour shorter). Now of course we’re hearing TV shows being compared to serialised novels. A natural equivalence, when you think about it. And explains why I couldn’t get into The Wire the first time I tried: I was trying with an episode part-way through Season 4, with no explanation as to who the hell the characters were that I was watching.

The second time I tried, by sitting down with 4 seasons of the DVDs & starting from the beginning, the show made perfect sense.

… It occurs to me I should be comparing TV, then, not to a serialised novel but to *a series* of serialised novels.