Friday, February 11, 2011

That's YAmore Blogfest and It's Back On with Twitter

First, in case you were concerned, totally NOT breaking up with Twitter. (Whatev, Kuzma, if you haven't gotten my flare for the dramatic yet, it may be lost on you forever).  Realized today that I don't actually have to tweet at all but instead can stalk and be delighted all day long with tweets such as these:


@hankgreen  We're working on facebook integration in Your Pants.  Hilarious notification from facebook: "Are you sure you want to remove Your Pants?"


@sarahlapolla  Remember the episode of Friends where Monica dates the hot guy from her HS & realizes he's lame?  That's what it's like to follow @johncusack


I did mention that I can be a bit fickle, right?  #Me=LoveTwitterStalking.  Way better than tweeting to Herb in Toledo.  Twitter is now Awesome.


Now on to more important things like the That's YAmore Blogfest that is going on over at Oasis For YA.  Basically, the rule is that I need to post a swoon-worthy scene for the upcoming Valentine's Day celebration from my WIP (which would be RADIO STATIONS ARE FOR LOSERS-don't get too attached to the title).  


Two important things to note:


1.  I am pretty sure that I mentioned that Valentine's Day doesn't work that well in my house (not that making puppies out of hearts with my 3 year old's class today wasn't Awesome because it TOTALLY was).  Please keep that in mind when critiquing anything that I would consider a "love scene."


2.  WIP means kind of Sucky.  No one has read this yet.  Okay, Carrie has read the first 15 pages but really, I am still first drafting so don't judge too harshly.  I am sure that the first draft of Harry Potter was a train wreck (okay, it probably wasn't which is why I kind of might hate J.K.Rowling).


And now to the scene...


*********

I was trying to channel some of the sultry voices that I had heard on other radio stations but I just couldn’t get into it. I felt like maybe a hair flip might help.  And that’s when I got caught in the microphone. 

I ended up having to do the station ID contorted sideways so that I could speak without sounding muffled.  Of course, Kyle walked in three seconds afterwards.

He arched an eyebrow at me. 

“The Best of Lady Day.  Nice choice.”

Then he walked over and grabbed a stack of CDs and started returning them to the wall behind me.  He didn’t even say anything about my hair snafu.  I sat frozen for a few seconds, waiting for him to laugh at me but he didn’t; he just sang along with Billy Holiday and kept sliding CDs into empty spaces. 

I slowly unwrapped my hair from the mic, which was actually hard since I couldn’t really see what I was doing.  Not that I was about to ask Kyle for help after he so graciously ignored my predicament.  It took me nearly the whole song to disentangle myself but when I was finally done, I looked up to see Kyle with this huge grin on his face. 

“You’re beautiful, Olivia.”

I must have turned forty shades of red.  I didn’t know what to say.  No one had ever called me beautiful who wasn’t related to me.  We didn’t really talk about that kind of stuff in Montessori because you know, we were encouraged to acknowledge the work that people did more than superficial stuff like how they looked.  But Kyle just said it, out of the blue, after I had spent five minutes wrestling with a microphone.  It was amazing.  
**********

Brilliant, right?  Okay, shut it.  I did say WIP.  And speaking of, I am in a pickle with RSAFL right now.  In all my mighty Ninja writing, I have managed to turn my book into "Can't Buy Me Love"...you know, the Patrick Dempsey movie from the 90's?  I think that all writers must go through this when they reach 30k words and yet, I feel a little put out about the whole thing.  I am not sure if I should power through and go back to fix the Dempsification problem later or if I need to take Ninja time off for thought before re-engaging and turning it into Awesome again.  

Suggestions?

8 comments:

Jessie Harrell said...

Christa - glad I found your blog. You are REALLY funny!
As for your WIP excerpt, I think you caught that giddy, butterflies moment really well. And I loved how his comment was so out of the blue. Nice.

Paige said...

CLASSIC!!!

Carrie said...

Oooo when does this happen? I ♥ Kyle. How bad is the Dempsification? (I am totally using that in a sentence this week by the way.) Is there a telescope involved?

It could be worse. You could have turned it into a Corey Feldman movie. You can recover from Dempsification, but once that baby's Feldified it's ALL OVER.

Read over it, regroup and KEEP GOING!

cleemckenzie said...

Well, I loved it. The hair snafu was the best.

erica and christy said...

Aww, what a nice thing for her to hear, especially after she was embarrassed! My current WIP (not the one in this blogfest) hit a dead-end at about word 15k. I did go back and delete about 2,000 and now I'm back to about 21k that needs some heavy editing and regrouping of the "saggy middle". I've heard from a lot of writers that they have trouble around word 30k in a 100k-or-so book (mine hit it early since it's a middle grade, I think). Put in a fun scene to un-Dempsify it and power through if you can. :)
erica

Bruce said...

Don't De-Dempsify, Re-Dempsify! I suggest Clint Dempsey, the soccer player from Nacodoches, TX (he is on YouTube for his goal for Fulham vs Juventus). If you insist on Patrick Dempsey, go all out with "Meatballs 3: Summer Job".

Jessica Silva said...

Actually, this was really good. Great voice, too. Nice and simplistic!

Somehow, though, it felt like she was retelling what happened instead of me reading what just happened. WEIRD. Not sure how to fix it (I looked back to try to find examples to help, but came up short). All I can think of is more immediacy. Less of "I ended up," "then he," "finally done." I would've liked her to SAY something, too. Even sputtering could've been cute :) But I like her voice a lot!

Great job, thanks for sharing!

Sophia said...

This was a really cute and funny scene with some great voice. And Kyle sounds like a keeper-- any guy who calls you beautiful after that kind of debacle and has a sense of humour to boot should be kept at all costs.
- Sophia.