Musing Monday

It's time for another Musing Monday over at Just One More Page... and this weeks question is:

When reading do you read every word? Do you ever skip chapters or skim over parts?



This is an interesting question, but also one that I'm not quite sure how to answer.

I do know that I would never ever skip a whole chapter, or even a whole page. If I don't like a book I am reading so much that I want to skip over parts of it, then I simply stop reading, rather than skipping through the book just to finish it.

There are also times when I'm reading a book that I am really into and dying to find out what happens next and my eyes will skip over large text blocks full of description to the dialogue on the next page, but then I usually rein myself back in and go back to reread what I missed.

As for skimming I don't think I do this, but I do read fairly quickly, so maybe there are times when I am not completely absorbing each and every word. Does that count as skimming? I don't think so, when I think of skimming something, I think of Men's Health Magazine.

My husband received a subscription to this magazine for Christmas, and since I cannot resist flipping through shiny magazine pages, I decided to take a look. Mostly it was like a women's magazine with fashion tips, diet tips, workout tips, and sex tips - all suggesting none too subtely that you need improvement. To be fair they also have the monthly Eat This, Not That article and I have to admit to being endlessly fascinated by information like: THE WORST DRINK ON THE PLANET!!! Not only do I love their use of hyperbole, but they also make comparisons of how many Krispy Kreme donuts or strips of bacon a food is equal to - as if these were some new kind of unit of measurement.

Okay, anyway, sorry for the detour - to get back to my original point, which was skimming, (it was skimming? right?) the other thing that Men's Health does is very helpfully highlight in yellow the main idea of all the articles throughout the magazine. So, with no effort at all you can easily skim through the magazine. I'm sure the writers of those articles must love knowing that out of the 1000 or so words that they wrote, most people won't bother to read more than the 50 highlighted ones.

Well, that is all from me on this topic. How about you? Do you skim or skip when you read?

What's the Big Idea?

Another blog chain has begun and this time I am in the middle. Today's topic - where do you get your ideas? The previous post can be found at Mary Lindsey's Weblog.

I have to admit that I found this topic difficult, not in the same "I'm harboring a dark secret" way as the last topic concerning genres did, but more in a drawing a blank kind of way.

My first instinct is to say something glib like, "Oh, I get my ideas at the end of the season when they go on sale 2-for-1." Really though this is just cover because my real response is to kind of shrug and say, "Ughh... hmmm... well, um, I.... hmmm."

In an effort to avoid being either glib or astoundingly inarticulate I am going to dig a little deeper, draw some comparisons to other things that have questionable relevance to this topic and see how that works out.

Metaphor/Analogy Thingy #1

If you have been on planet earth within the past week you have probably heard the name Michael Phelps somewhere between one to oh, I don't know a conservative estimate might be somewhere in the low thousands. And while the record-breaking eight gold medals he won might be the biggest story about him, I'd have to say that his insane 12,000 calories a day diet is a close second. The amount of food he consumes would (and has) made other people sick. The craziest thing is that most of the food he eats is the stuff the rest of us are told to avoid: sweets, carbs, and even fried stuff. He has to eat like this because he burns so many calories and spends so much time in the pool that when he's out of it he needs to get as many carbs into his system as quickly as possible.

In the same way that Michael Phelps indiscriminately fuels up with food, I do the same with information. TV, Internet, books, newspaper, back of the cereal box, overheard conversation at the grocery store, facebook updates, phone conversation with mom, husband telling me about his day at work - if I'm not writing, then I am information gathering. My friend Heather from film school used to say, "you have to feed the machine," and I know one of the chain bloggers currently on hiatus would agree with me as well. Michael Phelps needs calories to burn while he's swimming, and similiarly I information to burn while writing.

What happens to all that info once it is in my head brings us to:

Metaphor/Analogy Thingy #2:

My husband and I went to the grocery store together yesterday for our weekly (or bi-weekly depending on how many leftovers we eat) shopping trip. It was about halfway through the trip as I stood staring at the jams and jellies for several minutes that my husband accused me as he inevitably always does during these trips of putzing. I wasn't putzing, of course, I was trying to decide whether the apricot preserves that the recipe for Monte Cristo sandwiches called for would be best or if I should go with mango, as some of the recipe reviews suggested. Then on top of that I was looking at the different options for those two. (I won't keep you in suspense, after I explained the dilemma to my husband we chose apricot and with the leftover spiral sliced ham, a bit of brie, sandwiched between what is essentially french toasted bread it was pretty freaking delicious.)

I also wasn't putzing as my husband accused me of doing - I had a list and I had coupons and I was trying to make sure that I was using both. Which is not to say that on other occasions I haven't been a terrible putz - in fact I am notoriously putzy when I walk into a Target (especially the Super Target with the grocery section that we have around these parts) - I walk through the doors with the intention of purchasing something specific and then almost immediately something shiny catches my eye and the next thing I know I'm walking up and down the aisles of Target, looking at all the pretties and wondering what exactly I came in there to buy in the first place.

This is also my writing process. The information that I gorged on is what fills the store, that first flash of an idea for a story is what sends me in, and then I just wander the aisles picking up a bit of this and a bit of that. Okay, there is the occasional stab at structured thinking - of figuring out where the plot is going, but even for that I only have what's on my shelves to go off of. Also, while other minds or stores, might carry these same ideas, mine are still going to be uniquely my own because they are filtered through my store's own corporate mission statement: I believe most people are good at heart, I believe the bad guys that exist should get their asses kicked, and I believe in happy endings.

Speaking of endings, I think I'll stop here. You can find the next blog in this chain over at Archetype Writing.

Deal Breakers

This time I'm back for real.

After my posting last Tuesday reminiscing over all my vacation fun - one last souvenier presented itself - I had caught the lovely little virus that both of my little nieces had while we were there. Soon I had gone through a box full of tissues and when I wasn't blowing my nose I was trying to figure out a way to sleep... this was made more difficult by the fact that my son also caught the virus and it made him not want to nap at all (either because he had the scratchy throat symptom or because he couldn't breathe through his stuffy little nose) and anyway it was a horrible long week that after a weekend of rest (thanks to my husband for getting up with the baby so I could sleep in) and finally getting around to emptying the suitcases from the vacation - I am not really ready to blog again.

Anyway, I found this article from the NY Times a while back and bookmarked it because I thought it was pretty interesting concerning Recipes that are Deal Breakers. I love to cook and am big into using recipes - which I am pretty anal about following. And I am constantly looking for new recipes and different things to make, but of course, I have my own personal deal breakers as well. Anything that needs to be deep-fried is at the top of my list. Not just because of the horribly fattening aspect, although I do try to cook somewhat healthy at home, but mostly because I don't want to deal with having to dispose of all that used cooking oil. Another deal breaker is one that I came across when I had a subscription to Cooking Light magazine - so many of their recipes called for a ton of exotic or expensive ingredients to make one little dish - that I would automatically remove it from consideration.

This article also made me think about deal breakers in other aspects of life - and specifically in books. I know that when I am browsing in the bookstore or library there are some books that I pick up and have to read only a few sentences of the back cover copy to know that it is not for me. The one sentence that usually sends me running is: "Through three generations of one family" or "Three friends do this and that as they look for this and that" - it's always three, which I understand - three is the magic number in writing, but I just prefer to read a book that focuses on one main character's journey - not three or three generations worth. Another more recent deal breaker for me is any book that immediatly starts talking about the heroine's love of designer clothing and shoes - in fact my eyes go rolling right up into my head.

Those are my deal breakers in recipes and fiction - what are yours?