Days off. It’s funny how vacation is so needed and restful and fun, but then going back to work feels like this insurmountable burden. I guess “funny” isn’t the right word. But I’ve noticed every time there’s a holiday or a vacation from work, coming back feels like such a big deal. It doesn’t help that the system is currently down at my office and one of my monitors decided to die. That just adds to the feeling of needing a break from my break before I feel like I can work again. 😅
Elio and the loss of originality. During our long holiday weekend, Luis and I watched several movies. We watched Dreamworks’ Sinbad which was… all right. We also watched Get On Up starring Chadwick Boseman. That was quite good. And sad, since we lost him so young. He was really talented. But the main movie I wanted to write about here is Elio. I wanted to see Elio when it was in theaters, but our theater did not really give us a chance. It came out at a time when several other big movies came out, but still… Disney movies are usually out longer. I’m glad we finally saw it, and it got Luis and me thinking about how none of the action hero in space movies have been successful. Even Lightyear did poorly, and people love Buzz Lightyear.
For what it’s worth, I think Elio is very cute. The aliens are all designed uniquely, and it has little nods to other sci-fi movies like E.T. and Terminator 2. I don’t understand why people didn’t go see it, unless theaters everywhere didn’t show it for long enough. But it seems like original movies are falling by the wayside at Disney, and it’s so sad. I hope we can see Hoppers in theaters and it won’t suffer the same fate as Elio. Streaming is nice, but it’s not the same.
Limping to the end of Seeing Other People. This sounds more serious than it is. It’s taken me longer than anticipated but I’m slowly finishing up reading Seeing Other People by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’m not really feeling this one. It’s got moments, but it’s been a slog. Do you ever read a book and the words start to just roll through your brain like you’re not actually retaining any of them? I feel like that’s been happening to me with this book. It’s not holding my attention, and the plot bums me out. In the relationship part, it seems like they suddenly liked each other and I missed something. I guess not every book is for me, unfortunately even the ghost ones with pun titles.
Feedback and getting back into the writing groove. I edited my It’s A Wonderful Life-inspired novel with my dad’s notes and I’m feeling pretty good about it. We had dinner with my parents on Saturday and Mom gave me some notes as well, so I’m going to be pondering some more. Nothing major though, which is awesome. Hopefully this can be the year I actually send out query letters for it, but we shall see.
I’m going to be starting up work on the major rewrite of my Nerdfighters-inspired novel soon. As it approaches, I’m getting nervous. I haven’t taken such a long break from writing in a while. I think it was a good refresh for my brain, but I hope I haven’t lost my groove. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, though, so it’s not as if I’ll be going in with no plan. Luis read my outline and said it was good, too, so I’m also not going into it with a lot of garbled ideas. (We’ve all done that before, right?)
And before you think, “But Sara, your stories are inspired by other stories. They don’t sound very original either,” I’ll remind you that they’re inspired by, they’re not the exact same stories of anything else. It’s not even the exact story of how Luis and I met anymore. That was at least six drafts ago. C’mon.
Until next time, stay safe out there.
Sara Mazariegos 