I was going to write a piece on how music was slowly, if not already, deteriorating as 2011 begins to simmer down to its end. But that topic could go on forever, and I'm not nearly in the mood to sit here and go through that depressing subject. I will write about how music is important, however. Why just this week, I can't stumble out of bed without first hearing Dance Gavin Dance's "Uneasy Hearts Weigh the Most." Normally, screamo rock frightens my poor little earholes, but this song is catchy because of its guitar riffs, and the two guys screaming on the other end are actually carrying a tune. Not bad.
If I sit down in front of my lap top and I know I'm going to be beating myself all day to complete at least (AT LEAST!) three chapters in my novel, I'm going to need at least four hours of music. On repeat. Currently I have a playlist entitled "Writing Music, Fool" on my Windows Media Player, and it's got all kinds of peanut butter deliciousness for my jelly-fied ears.
Mostly, I'm a rock junkie. Ask anyone and they'll tell you: "I'm the whitest black girl you'll ever know." I'm gonna stop using that saying after awhile for reasons I will express in another blog for another time. I only listen to a certain type of rock, however. If I can sing along to it, oh baby, I need it on my headphones. Now. Growing up, my uncle (who just so happens to be white, but listens to every kind of music that there is) slapped a Guns n' Roses disc under my nose, and I've been gone ever since. Before, I had gotten into Blondie per my mother, and would play "Call Me" and "One Way or Another" at all hours of the day, driving everyone in my house mad. I dabbled into a little Metallica, but quickly dumped it when I couldn't sing along to James Hetfield's gutteral pass for singing. Ew, no thanks. I stumbled across the rock stations on the radio and found even more bands that I could bob my head to. Thus, a rock goddess was born.
My favourite band of all time is Queens of the Stone Age. Mostly, all the lead singer, Josh Homme, sings about is rough sex, drugs, depression, partying, sex, and sex, a life I could never lead, but love to listen to either way. At my wedding, instead of playing boring ass "Canon in D" as I paraded down the aisle, I begged my husband to let me walk down the aisle to Queens of the Stone Age's "I Wanna Make It Wit Chu." It's a beautiful slow song with a dash of seventies innocent set for a beautiful ceremony. I can remember my dad slow dancing with me in the living room to this song, and he wasn't even drunk. Ahem. However, it does pay to read and understand the lyrics of a song before you dedicate it to someone. My wedding song? According to Josh Homme, the writer, in an interview with some cool ass people, he said that the song was indeed "about fucking." Whoops.
People will throw music at me that I've never heard before. My brother let me sample an idiot rapper, Gucci Mane, and I turned my nose up at him. "What the fuck is he saying?" My brother, bobbing his head to the thunderous bass coming from his headphones, shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know, but it's swag."
Swag? What the fuck is swag?
Doesn't matter, because even though I can't understand hardly a damn thing that's coming out of this man's mouth, the instrumental pouring out of the speakers and the bass buzzing out of the wires is good enough to write a dialouge or two.
Movies make music better. Or music makes movies better. Imagine that one scene from some bad ass action flick where the good guy is walking away from the building as it blows up behind him. Think of how whack that scene would be if it didn't have that awesome song playing in the background. Sometimes I wish my life had theme music. I can think of the song I would use right now: Mario's Theme. Grocery shopping? Getting my truck washed? Mario's Theme. Brushing my teeth? Eating a bowl of cereal? Mario's Theme. It's fucking perfect.
Whenever I get pregnant, and I'm in the room getting ready to push my baby's gigantic melon head through my precious vagina, I will demand music playing in the room. Loudly. I don't want to focus on the pain surging through my body or my vagina being ripped to shreds. Instead, I think I will focus on Lil Wayne's "Lollipop", Rihanna's "Disturbia", The Strokes' "Razorblade"....whoa. Wait. Maybe not that one. That title alone made me double over in pain. I don't want my kid coming into the world with his mom bellowing like a banshee escaping hell. I want the yelling to be droned out with good music, that way he'll grow up and know that music is good and can be used to soothe.
I'll probably use the Mario Theme at my funeral, I'm just saying. Lowering the casket? Children crying? Mario Theme.
So. When I get home and turn on my lap top and the next fifty pages of my novel are waiting to be written, I will search through my huge collection of music and put together the most bad ass of all music playlists. It will include a little bit of rock, a little bit of rap, a smidget of coutry, a dash of dance, a splash of r n' b, and a whole lot of rhythm.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Queens Of The Stone Age : News
Queens Of The Stone Age : News Bourdain and Homme in Palm Desert eating everything in sight. I'm pretty sure there was a lot more drinking and shenanigans going on when the cameras weren't rolling :D
In five, four, three, two, one...
Action!
Hi! My name is Moni, or Tammy if you really want to be nosy. I haven't written a blog since my junior year in high school. Back then I was drooling over the wide shoulders of a metal mouthed, tight T-shirt wearing maniac and all of the sheninagians we pulled at our first job together. This blog will be a little less about coveting, and a little more about writing.
When I tell people that I'm in the midst of writing a novel, they get this look on their face that kind of wants to say "Please don't ask me to read your stuff. I have a very busy life and I don't want to read about you wallowing in vodka and bunny slippers." I have to warm them up to the idea that I'm, ahem, actually a pretty good writer (whilst hiding my first draft in a box under the sofa.) I've been writing seriously since the end of fourth grade. I was scared of telling my family. At the time, I really didn't think that it was a real job, something that someone would actually do from nine-to five and get paid. But I was always nose deep in a Stephen King novel and would think to myself, this lazy bastard doesn't do anything all day except sit at his typewriter while drinking warm beer and wracking his brain for scary monsters, and he's getting paid to do it. Ding ding ding ding ding! I can do that no problem! I told my dad after he was picking me up from school one day, nervousness fumbling through my fingertips. I remember being so small and him being so tall and large, like a giant tree I was too afraid to climb. Would this big dude laugh at me? I wondered. "I want to be a writer when I grow up," I said as he turned the car onto our tree lined street. I remember him shrugging his shoulders, the traces of a small smile on his face as he considered the idea. "Go for it," he said. So I did.
Writing was easiest when I was in class. It didn't matter what school I was at, what grade I was in, what class I was pretending to take notes from, I always had a notebook open on my desk, and I was always writing down a scene. I finished a whole story in a 200-paged college ruled notebook write at the end of a science test in the sixth grade. During an assembly about drunk driving my freshman year, when they dimmed the lights for the stage while everyone was huddled into the small cafeteria, I was haunched over on the lunch table, my pen wisping away at a new dialogue. That was my thing. I was a writer. I was always writing. People would stop me at the end of class, the time dwindling down before the last bell of the day. They would stretch their necks over my desk, my pen writing fire across the pale blue lines of my latest work. They would ask, "So...whatcha writing?"
"A book," I would say.
Surprised: "A book? Like a real book?"
"Yup."
And always the biggest question: "How many pages is it?"
If I said anything higher than sixty pages, they would gasp. "Oh my God. I wanna read it when you're finished." And I would smile, proud, happy, eager to finish.
I started an idea about high school friends shifting through the times and changes of their high school career while I was a sixth grader in Virginia. I had no idea about high school, but I watched a lot of people, and I watched a lot of TV. There are four of these stories, and I finished them all my junior year. I started a book about a space cowboy, catching bad guys, and saving damsels in distress all while saving the universe in his tight leather pants. I finished this the summer before I moved to Florida, before my sophomore year. I started a book about my first job working at a pizza buffet and all the crazy characters that worked there with me. The idea from the story came from a simple question: wouldn't it be cool if the pizza place acted as a cover for drug distribution? I finished this story my senior year. I started a love story about a boy and a girl at the end of the seventh grade. The boy would come to represent every son of a bitch that I ever fell in love with and the girl would represent me. I've revised this story at least four times, and this year I intend to get it published.
Published! That was the word that I wanted most of all in my vocabulary. My dream was to become the youngest author on the New York Best Sellers List...at twelve. My craft just wasn't up to par then, but damn could a little girl dream. I sent in a few ideas to Scholastic when I was fifteen. I got rejected because I didn't have a literary agent. While reading the rejection letter, I wondered out loud what the hell a literary agent was? I kept writing. Once I graduated high school without a clue in the world as to what I wanted to do to, you know...earn money, it began to dawn on me that maybe being a writer full time was a bad idea after all. I mean, all I did was sit at my desk and live my life vicariously through my characters. My parents were breathing down my throat. My hair was nappy. My car was giving me problems. I had to do something with my life. Expeditiously.
I thought out the idea to be a nurse, like my mother. I didn't really want to spoon food people all day. I really didn't want to smell old people fart all day. I knew that I didn't want to be someone's only care. What if someone died on me? Holy Christ, I couldn't take that kind of pressure. I thought about going to college, about getting my associate's degree in English, but the year was 2007 and the gas prices were ridiculous. The pay to live was ridiculous and I didn't want to have to make the decision one day of eating dinner or paying for an atrociously priced English book. I even thought about film school. I love movies. I love bossing people around... Bingo! I'll be a film director! I'll be the black female version of Stephen Spielberg! But film school was too far away from home. Film school cost $75,000...a year. And even if I did finish school and got a degree, there was no guaranteed openings for a job. After awhile, I got married and toyed with the idea of being a dental assistant. They made awesome money. I needed awesome money. But life happened and I had to quit school. I stared longingly at my computer screen one lonely afternoon, and dusted off an old manuscript. Oh, well. Back to page one, I guess.
So this year, I've published some work on a website called Smashwords.com. People come across my crazy titles and they become interested. They download my work for free, sometimes for a fee, and they leave a review. It's a good feeling knowing that over 900 people have read one short story from me. It let's me know that I'm getting closer and closer to my dream...
Hi! My name is Moni, or Tammy if you really want to be nosy. I haven't written a blog since my junior year in high school. Back then I was drooling over the wide shoulders of a metal mouthed, tight T-shirt wearing maniac and all of the sheninagians we pulled at our first job together. This blog will be a little less about coveting, and a little more about writing.
When I tell people that I'm in the midst of writing a novel, they get this look on their face that kind of wants to say "Please don't ask me to read your stuff. I have a very busy life and I don't want to read about you wallowing in vodka and bunny slippers." I have to warm them up to the idea that I'm, ahem, actually a pretty good writer (whilst hiding my first draft in a box under the sofa.) I've been writing seriously since the end of fourth grade. I was scared of telling my family. At the time, I really didn't think that it was a real job, something that someone would actually do from nine-to five and get paid. But I was always nose deep in a Stephen King novel and would think to myself, this lazy bastard doesn't do anything all day except sit at his typewriter while drinking warm beer and wracking his brain for scary monsters, and he's getting paid to do it. Ding ding ding ding ding! I can do that no problem! I told my dad after he was picking me up from school one day, nervousness fumbling through my fingertips. I remember being so small and him being so tall and large, like a giant tree I was too afraid to climb. Would this big dude laugh at me? I wondered. "I want to be a writer when I grow up," I said as he turned the car onto our tree lined street. I remember him shrugging his shoulders, the traces of a small smile on his face as he considered the idea. "Go for it," he said. So I did.
Writing was easiest when I was in class. It didn't matter what school I was at, what grade I was in, what class I was pretending to take notes from, I always had a notebook open on my desk, and I was always writing down a scene. I finished a whole story in a 200-paged college ruled notebook write at the end of a science test in the sixth grade. During an assembly about drunk driving my freshman year, when they dimmed the lights for the stage while everyone was huddled into the small cafeteria, I was haunched over on the lunch table, my pen wisping away at a new dialogue. That was my thing. I was a writer. I was always writing. People would stop me at the end of class, the time dwindling down before the last bell of the day. They would stretch their necks over my desk, my pen writing fire across the pale blue lines of my latest work. They would ask, "So...whatcha writing?"
"A book," I would say.
Surprised: "A book? Like a real book?"
"Yup."
And always the biggest question: "How many pages is it?"
If I said anything higher than sixty pages, they would gasp. "Oh my God. I wanna read it when you're finished." And I would smile, proud, happy, eager to finish.
I started an idea about high school friends shifting through the times and changes of their high school career while I was a sixth grader in Virginia. I had no idea about high school, but I watched a lot of people, and I watched a lot of TV. There are four of these stories, and I finished them all my junior year. I started a book about a space cowboy, catching bad guys, and saving damsels in distress all while saving the universe in his tight leather pants. I finished this the summer before I moved to Florida, before my sophomore year. I started a book about my first job working at a pizza buffet and all the crazy characters that worked there with me. The idea from the story came from a simple question: wouldn't it be cool if the pizza place acted as a cover for drug distribution? I finished this story my senior year. I started a love story about a boy and a girl at the end of the seventh grade. The boy would come to represent every son of a bitch that I ever fell in love with and the girl would represent me. I've revised this story at least four times, and this year I intend to get it published.
Published! That was the word that I wanted most of all in my vocabulary. My dream was to become the youngest author on the New York Best Sellers List...at twelve. My craft just wasn't up to par then, but damn could a little girl dream. I sent in a few ideas to Scholastic when I was fifteen. I got rejected because I didn't have a literary agent. While reading the rejection letter, I wondered out loud what the hell a literary agent was? I kept writing. Once I graduated high school without a clue in the world as to what I wanted to do to, you know...earn money, it began to dawn on me that maybe being a writer full time was a bad idea after all. I mean, all I did was sit at my desk and live my life vicariously through my characters. My parents were breathing down my throat. My hair was nappy. My car was giving me problems. I had to do something with my life. Expeditiously.
I thought out the idea to be a nurse, like my mother. I didn't really want to spoon food people all day. I really didn't want to smell old people fart all day. I knew that I didn't want to be someone's only care. What if someone died on me? Holy Christ, I couldn't take that kind of pressure. I thought about going to college, about getting my associate's degree in English, but the year was 2007 and the gas prices were ridiculous. The pay to live was ridiculous and I didn't want to have to make the decision one day of eating dinner or paying for an atrociously priced English book. I even thought about film school. I love movies. I love bossing people around... Bingo! I'll be a film director! I'll be the black female version of Stephen Spielberg! But film school was too far away from home. Film school cost $75,000...a year. And even if I did finish school and got a degree, there was no guaranteed openings for a job. After awhile, I got married and toyed with the idea of being a dental assistant. They made awesome money. I needed awesome money. But life happened and I had to quit school. I stared longingly at my computer screen one lonely afternoon, and dusted off an old manuscript. Oh, well. Back to page one, I guess.
So this year, I've published some work on a website called Smashwords.com. People come across my crazy titles and they become interested. They download my work for free, sometimes for a fee, and they leave a review. It's a good feeling knowing that over 900 people have read one short story from me. It let's me know that I'm getting closer and closer to my dream...
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