French... in action?

A long time ago in a land far away I tried learning French. Unfortunately, this far away land wasn't France. And it wasn't that far away from where I am now, but that's a different story entirely. My point is that after one semester I ended up focusing on something else and then something else that required me to leave college (i.e. drop out). I don't regret the choice, but I've found myself mystified when Mr. Metallic Vinca uses French to speak to me.

Having had enough, I nearly cheered when I found French in Action online. But the videos, I realized, weren't enough for me.

I scoured eBay and gradually acquired over time: the textbook, first half; the workbook, first half; the study guide, part one; and even the instructor's guide. Thankfully, I had kept the tapes from when I tried studying all those years ago.

Learning French has taught me a new appreciation for English. No, I don't mean it like that. Learning French has taught me the importance of knowing the music of a language. It's something we're losing as we switch to online communication like texting, Twitter and blogging. But in the days when people used to read books out loud as part of the evening's entertainment, writers understood that there had to be a rhythm, a cadence to the structure of their story. That's one of the things I like about the Watchmen (graphic novel). Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore created a rhythm inside by using a certain structure. Anything outside that structure then becomes far more noticeable.

I love movies, and I love books. And I'm learning that each does particular things particularly well but the thing I love best about books is hearing that music in my head.

Now, if I can just remember to transfer that to my current novel, I think I'll be happy.

Oh, writing a good story. That's in there, too. ;)

Au revoir.

Update on writing

Finished the rough draft of a novel. Finished it some time ago (a few weeks) but thought I should mention it here. While it cools, I've started a novel about the tale of Psyche and Eros. Yeah, I know it's cliche. It's part of a larger series and will probably end up being sold online. It just feels right. The earlier mentioned rough draft, though, will be sent to editors. For a time, anyway.

Love of Seven Dolls

I first found out about Paul Gallico's writing when I was eighteen. I read The Abandoned (called Jennie in the UK) and loved it. It was a very simple story and barely believable and yet somehow so real that I just fell in love with it. I also appreciated the simplicity of the style itself. Sometimes I get annoyed by writers, no matter how good they are, who string these lovely sentences together that are so lovely you just want to sit and think about how good the writing is. This, of course, slows down the story.

Love of Seven Dolls is spun in a straightforward way. In fact, it's very short and most of it is "told" instead of "shown". There are no flashbacks, no intense childhood or wartime vignettes showing us the agony the evil puppeteer, Capitaine Coq, went through. It would have been nice, and if they ever make a true movie of this book (Lili and Carnival don't count) those scenes will be necessary. However, for this story, by making sure key scenes are fully fleshed out, you accept the stuff that is stated as fact. I think anyone who wants to know which parts of a book must be shown and which can be truncated into a phrase or two needs to read Paul Gallico's work.

Now, for the story itself.

To sum up the plot, it's about a girl named Mouche who is kicked out of the next to last rung on the entertainment ladder in post-war Paris: all she had to do was walk around and take her clothes off. She didn't have the looks for it. Left with either selling herself on the corner or plunging into the Seine, she chooses the more sensible latter option. Before she can, a puppet of the hand-type gets her attention. Through those seven puppets, she decides to keep living and in the process gets an audience.

However, the puppeteer is an evil man named Michel Peyrot, a.k.a. Capitaine Coq. He never knew his parents and grew up in the carnival, taking his ventriloquist skills with him into the POW camp when he was captured by the Germans. After the war, he went back to the carnival shows using his puppets and making a meager living... until Mouche. He sees a meal-ticket and grabs it/her. Thus, the insanity begins both for her and him, a tug of war between the goodness she contains and the puppets insist on pulling out of Michel and all the cynicism Captitaine Coq can muster.

Mind, it's not an easy read. Michel does some awful things in this book. I mean really awful. And everything good he does is hidden behind the puppets. That's part of his insanity. Thankfully, Mouche, though a true waif kind of girl, is stronger than she appears. It's her goodness and untouchable innocence that kept me going through some really awful stuff. And it's her relationship with Michel, as twisted as it is, that I loved watching as her internal steel worked its magic on Michel.

I think the best way to describe this book is an updated version of Beauty and the Beast. In the end, the monster dies and it is truly amazing what happens then. It's a subtle ending and far more powerful than I expected.

Once upon a time there was a blog...

... a blog devoted to writing... and then it was abandoned.... like many other things in my life, including writing.

I think it's time I resurrected this.

More later. (Gee, that sounds dramatic. :/ )