inspirations galore

So a few days ago, I went to watch "Julie and Julia" at the movie theatre by myself. I left work a couple hours early because there wasn't too much work to do and the weather was hot and my coworkers seemed to want to play hooky as well.









It was about 3:00 and I had some time to kill before my dinner date with my favorite girls (see picture, minus michelle who is soaking up the sun in cancun, and add on a year of aging and different hairstyles to each of us) so I decided to do one of my all-time favorite past times, which is watching a movie by my solitary self. I'll maybe blog about that another day.

I'd give the movie 4 stars out of 5 for entertainment value, the ability to make me want to call my husband as soon as I got out to tell him I love him, and wit. It wasn't the most exciting story out there, but it did also inspire me a lot. Not that I now want to be the author of a famous blog-turned published book writer-turned character of a movie, but I do now want to write a better blog.

And I think for a good blog, you have to have somewhat of a purpose or a meaningful format that is uniquely yours. I can do the whole random rant thing for my own journaling pleasure, but maybe I can go just beyond that a bit.

SO.

The running format my blogs will now take are... logged observations that I make about the world around me. This is, of course, maybe just a slightly different name to what I would be doing all along anyways, but in my mind at least, it's a bit more purposeful. Random, but purposeful. And as I said in the first entry, I'll try to make observations about the greater world around me, as well as things I learn about myself, my work, God, etc. Expand my yooniverse. So, here goes.

Observation #1: Sometimes if a plot is good enough, the writing can suck and the book will still make it.
I'm talking about a particular book that I'm reading at the moment, though now that I think about it, a prime example of this would be Korean dramas. Korean dramas, more often than not, do the cheeziest and unoriginal delivery (usually because of bad acting) of a story, but because the plot itself somehow draws you in to make you wonder how the story will continue, you put up with all the rest. I'm reading The Friday Night Knitting Club right now, which apparently is pretty popular lately. I'm about 3/4 done. From the very first few pages I read up until where I am now, I couldn't shake off the feeling that the writing was done by a newbie. That is actually not true, according to the blurb on the author, but I don't know, that's how I felt about her writing. (Oh my, I'm being pretty mean right now. But this is just my amateur opinion and I'm sure many will disagree with me.) You know what it is though? I think her writing kind of makes me think that if I wrote a book, that's what I'd sound like. It's not BAD writing, but it sounds a bit forced. Like I'm trying hard to write a book well. Which is what it would sound like if I tried to write a book now.

Anyways, the point of my observation is that the plot is interesting enough that I keep wanting to read it. There is some foreshadowing that makes me look forward to finding out if my premonitions are correct, and little twists and turns that take the story somewhere I didn't expect at all. But there is that little voice in my head that keeps saying "this feels like when you're watching a movie and the actor acts like he's acting."

So I guess a good book is one that has either a good plot or good writing style.
A great book is one that has both.