Technically the month leading up to Christmas is advent and only after Christmas has the Christmas season officially begun, so that means – MORE MUSIC! 😀
#1: Merry Chreasmaugh by Tobuscus
#2: Time to Fall in Love by Lindsey Stirling
#3: Stuck in Love by Kim Kyung Hee (from Goblin)
#4: Underneath the Tree by Kelly Clarkson
#5: Wonderful Christmas Time by Paul McCartney
As you may have noticed, there’s none of the traditional Christmas Carols on any of these lists – but that’s not because I don’t love those! I just love singing those live at church and with my family. That’s why these lists are full of my favorite secular songs (unless there is a recorded version of a particular church carol that is good!)
Some of my favorite Classic Christmas Carols are:
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem Silent Night What Child is This God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen Hark the Herald Angels Sing
I hope that your Christmas Day was filled with Jesus, family, love and happiness! ❤
But, I’m not meaning it in any kind of weird, possessive, bad kind of way.
I mean it in the – if you love young adult books, and you want to write young adult books – then read a lot of young adult books, and watch a lot of young adult movies and tv shows.
If you love Sci-Fi – then read and watch a ton of Sci-Fi! If you want to write children’s books, then read a lot of children’s books, if you want to write a cookbook, then study as many different cookbooks as you can (and also, you know, cook and bake and stuff!).
If you love movies, and you want to write screenplays – then watch a bunch of movies, critically. Study them, pay attention to the angles and the lighting and the placement of objects and the dialogue, etc. etc. While also, reading scripts, studying scripts, familiarizing yourself with the format, etc.
Writing is just like anything, and everything else, it gets better with practice and study.
Basically, figure out your genre, your type, your niche that you want to write – and then consume as much of that genre, type, niche as you can. The more you read mystery, the better you’ll get at writing mystery. The more you watch action movies, the better you’ll be at writing action movies. The more you bake, the better you’ll be at baking.
But, the biggest part of this advice is, the first time you’re reading or watching something – just enjoy it! Enjoy it that first time, don’t pay attention to the commas, or the allegory, or the whatever other big literary word you can think of, just enjoy it.
Enjoy it and DO pay attention to the way it makes you feel, remember the moments it made you laugh or cry, remember the times it blindsided you with a twist. Then, the second, third, and fifteenth time you read/watch it you’ll notice HOW they made you feel/think those things without even having to try.
Oh also, a note about picking a genre, type, or niche – don’t stress about that part. I know, me personally I write what I love, but then when I try to define it I get bogged down in the “aaagh, it’s too many things! It’s horror, it’s fantasy, it’s romance, it’s comedy, it’s ya, it’s sci-fi, it’s contemporary, aaaagh I don’t know!!” So, yeah, don’t get stressed about that part.
Just read/watch what you love, enjoy it, read/watch it again, study it, write it, and before you know it – boom! You’ll have a book/script written!
I hope this was coherent!😆 If it wasn’t, I apologize!
When the live-action remake of Mulan came out, they added a new song titled “Loyal, Brave & True” by Christina Aguilera. The tune is nice, the song is fine – the lyrics are all wrong!
Whoever wrote this song did not understand the character of Mulan at all!
So – I re-wrote the lyrics. I took what they had, and I moved around and fixed the lyrics so that now they fit for Mulan – they’re “True” to her character.
I’m only going to put down the lyrics as I’ve re-written them, so if you want to hear the original lyrics then you’ll have to go and look them up.
Here we go:
“War is now calling,
Over my shoulder,
I hear the soldiers cry.
All for my family,
Reason I’m breathing,
I’ll take my sword and try.
Should I ask myself in the water
What a warrior would do?
I just know beneath my armor
That I’m loyal, brave, and true.
That I’m loyal, brave, and true!
Losing is easy,
Winning is harder.
I don’t know what to do!
Out in the open,
No one to save me,
Will you turn and leave me too?
Should I ask myself in the water
What a warrior would do?
Can’t you see beneath my armor
That I’m loyal, brave, and true?
That I’m loyal, brave, and true!
Cold is the morning,
Warm is the dream,
Chasing the answer
That I can’t see.
Will I be stronger?
Will I be weak?
Will you stay with me?
Here I am without my armor,
Standing in my father’s shoes.
Even though it now is harder,
I’ll stay loyal, brave, and true!”
So, yeah! That’s my re-write.
I feel like this way more captures the heart of who Mulan is as a character. She IS loyal, brave, and true. She never questioned that. She questioned almost everything else in her life, but NEVER that she was loyal, brave, and true.
In fact, I’m pretty sure that she felt like that was ALL that she had to offer. She wasn’t a perfect, beautiful, feminine daughter, she didn’t know how to be the perfect soldier – but she knew that she was always loyal, brave, and true.
THESE lyrics show that! (Maybe one day I’ll record a cover with these lyrics!)
For your pleasure, I’ve attached an orchestral cover of the song – that way you can sing the song with these new lyrics without the distraction of the bad lyrics. (Yes, I said what I said, the original lyrics were straight up bad! But the tune, and the idea for the song and this cover, is beautiful!)
A 2020 MBC Korean drama starring Shin Sung Rok and Lee Se Young, Kairos will have you jumping out of your seat, hiding behind your hands, running around your living room and generally freaking out with every single episode.
It follows Kim Seo Jin (Shin Sung Rok), an upper-class uptight workaholic, and Han Ae Ri (Lee Se Young), a lower-class hardworking daughter who is saving up money for her mother’s medical expenses.
One night Kim Seo Jin’s daughter is kidnapped.
While waiting desperately for a ransom call, Kim Seo Jin gets a phone call from Han Ae Ri, who insists that the phone that she’s just called is hers and he’s taken it. He informs her that it’s his, he just got this number within the last month, and hangs up. After a few more annoying calls and texts from Han Ae Ri, always at 10:33 PM, Kim Seo Jin sends her the missing poster for his daughter. As the time continues to pass Kim Seo Jin falls into despair, until Han Ae Ri informs him that, while the date on his poster is incorrect, she’s seen his daughter.
They try to meet up – but mutually no show – or so they think. That is when Kim Seo Jin discovers a faded copy of the missing poster for his daughter, with the date scratched off and re-written in to being one month earlier.
Then, Han Ae Ri’s mother goes missing.
In her desperation and confusion, Han Ae Ri calls her deceased father’s phone number – only to have it answered by Kim Seo Jin – one month in the future.
Kim Seo Jin has figured it out – they’re separated in time, one month apart, and are somehow able to communicate for 1 minute everyday at 10:33 PM.
Finally, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, a way to undo the past, and save both Kim Seo Jin’s daughter and Han Ae Ri’s mother. But, the journey also uncovers some long buried truths that may contain some deadly consequences.
This show is sooooo good!
Genuinely, if you love time travel, but even if you don’t, then you will love this show!
Not only is the story tightly paced and the plot phenomenal – the acting is seriously out of this world!
I first got to know Shin Sung Rok as the evil brother from My Love From The Star, and had seen him in many different types of roles since then. After his performance in The Last Empress, I knew that all I needed was to know that he was in the show to know that it was going to be a hit! He brings the pain, the confusion, the fear, the desperation, and the layers that only few actors can truly deliver.
Then, we have Lee Se Young, who’s been acting since she was a child and has only gotten better and better with time! This role felt like such a different role from those that she usually plays, there was no comedy or silliness or any of that – it was just pure focused desperation. I loved it!
After seeing this show, I discovered that the two had acted before in a delightful little Rom-Com called Trot Lovers. A truly, entirely different kind of show all around. 🤣 A good one, but for entirely different reasons.
I don’t know what else to say, except to say that – if you like action, drama, thriller, time travel, mystery, or just well-written, superbly-acted, perfectly-toned tv shows – then you definitely need to add Kairos to your watchlist!!
You can find Kairos over on Viki.com. You will have to sign-up to watch this show as it is not one of their free ones, but trust me it is well worth the cost!
Don’t forget to subscribe and comment below letting me know if you’ve seen Kairos, or what other shows I should watch/recommend.
This is one that I read from a writing advice book several years ago (I forget the name), and it’s a good one (but it can go wrong too, and I’ll explain how).
A lot of writing is emotional and “vibe-al”, so if the mood isn’t right – well then, that character that we were planning on killing off might just marry the main love interest, or the whole thing might turn into an expose on the private lives of apples.
So, maintaining the right mood is crucial to maintaining the proper flow of the story.
This one messed me up a bit too though, because it made me very inflexible. I had developed the habit of writing out at cafe’s – well, when a global pandemic strikes that can really disrupt your flow.
Even without a pandemic though, if you’re writing in public maybe somebody took that window seat that you really like, or the barista’s are out of the syrup that you always take in your coffee, or that spicy food you ate earlier is just really not sitting right with you and you have to keep packing everything up to use the public restroom.
So, keep your writing space special – but be flexible too. 😀
Wait, don’t click away yet! This is a really good genuine tip, I promise! Without this tip you won’t be able to accomplish the #1 writing rule.
I’m not saying ‘limit yourself’ as in ‘limit your imagination’ or ‘limit how good your are/can be’.
No.
I mean – Limit Yourself.
Give yourself a SET TIME.
A certain amount of pages.
A minimum (and maximum!) daily word count.
Set. A. Limit. (you can make it the sky if you want!)
Trust me, with this tip you will be able to achieve the #1 writing rule of WRITE EVERY DAY.
Cause, let’s face it – writing every day sounds easy enough (you know, even getting a few words down on the page is good work), but what about when we’re reeeeeally tired? Or, we’ve got too much laundry to do? Or the ideas just aren’t coming?
Well, if you LIMIT YOURSELF – telling yourself that you’ll only write for 20 minutes a day, or 1 page a day, or 500 words a day – then suddenly, that daunting task of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys) becomes a doable feat.
Even is you only write for 5 minutes, or a single sentence, that’s something and it keeps the momentum going so that when the muse strikes – it will strike a lot sooner and more often if you’ve kept up the daily habit.
Also though – limit yourself on stopping after reaching your maximum word count, page number, time limit. You’ll get a lot more done if you write a little something every day then if you burn out in one intense night (just like with working out, eating right, praying daily or any other habit).
So – let’s make it a HABIT and remember – WRITE DAILY – LIMIT YO’ SELF! 😉
A Writers View 