Sentimental
This is the season you will find me crying. A lot.
You see, I can go a couple of YEARS without crying over real stuff. I think I cried myself out in my teens and twenties, maybe. Or maybe years of one thing after another in my battle with Crohn's rendered me unable to cry. Sometimes I FEEL like I SHOULD have a "good cry" (gentlemen . . . yes, it's a chick thing, I think), but it doesn't happen. Sometimes, I will even put on a movie I know is guaranteed to make me cry, just so I can once in a while have that release.
But generally, in real life, I just don't cry (note to the Universe: this is not a challenge to now strike me down with a bunch of bad stuff . . . this year has been hard enough).
But . . . this is the season. Sentimental tears all over the place. It started with jingle bells. There I was unpacking some, and I thought of my late grandparents because of the sound of a set of bells and the door hanging they used to have on their door. For the record, my grandfather has been gone almost 30 years, and my grandmother for over 15. Well, tell my sentimental heart that because I started crying because I missed them.
Then I saw this. I've had too many girlfriends already in the battle against the disease. So I both laughed and cried.
Now the friggin' Hallmark commercials!!! Enough! The "brother who was away in Africa coming home to Folger's" commercial. I mean, COME ON, stop making me CRY! These sentimental tears are driving me nuts.
The songs of the season make me cry. O Holy Night . . . dear Lord, please!
And I HAVE to watch this movie once during the season. I cry in at LEAST three places in the film, most especially when Colin Firth proposes to the waitress.
So how does this relate to writing? Now I am writing two scenes in Memory Falls, my work-in-progress. Both are incredibly sentimental. So I decided to manipulate my own emotions and set them both at Christmas. I mean, hell, if I am crying all over the place . . . might as well USE this pathetic state I find myself in to write better.
And I realize . . . ONLY a writer would think that way.
So tell me . . . how does the season make you feel?
26 comments:
The season makes me feel like I am white-knuckling through. I just aim to create a nice holiday for my family. Not tears for me. And I love Love Actually.
We have holiday music on 24-7 and it finally snowed last night. I absolutely love the trying-to-get-to-pageant-rehearsal-through-a-big-snowfall.
Twinkly lights and magic. Tis the season.
This not my favorite season.
My ex died on December 18th, 2004 - the first night of winter break.
Hanukkah is a minor Jewish holiday - technically classified as a festival. It has meaning but the hoopla has only evolved because of it's proximity to Christmas.
Now catch me around Passover and I'm full of mirth.
My wife is sitting next to me and I said, "So how does the season make me feel, honey?" She laughed and said, "Bah, humbug!" Hey, blame it on the seasonal affective disorder and the cold.
It makes me feel cranky.
This time of year makes me wish I could time travel to better times. But, not possible, so I just make the best of it.
I'm with you on writing emotional scenes. Usually I'll have a song playing while writing that pushes my emotional button. The last time I wrote anything that came from my gut/heart, though, was the day my dog died. I'd share it but it's way too personal. I still can't read it (a poem) without crying.
This has always been my favourite time of year. It isn't a day for me but an entire month. This year, however, is an odd one filled with mixed blessings... newly single and out of work, but my kids have worked out some accommodation with each other and are very willing to hang out with mom and do some Christmas-y things so I'm lucky.
As for the writing, I always use whatever emotions I'm dealing with to propel my characters forward. Once, after a particularly bad dream, I used my fear to write a chapter in the middle of the night. There I was, freezing in my jammies with tears in my eyes.
I love your note to the universe, Erica.
Also I think it's a very 'writer' thing to arrange writing emotional scenes around a personally emotional time.
Christmas changes for me over the years - right now it's just very taxing - getting everything ready, making sure everyone has a nice holiday. My favorite part is getting to sit by the tree when it's nice and quiet and daydream by the lights, with a cup of coffee, and maybe a good book. I love the hubbub of Christmas Eve, too, seeing everyone and the kids so excited, but the quiet moments are few and far between.
I have a whole range of emotions associated with the holiday season. Lots of fond memories of being with my family, but the holiday season was also the time of my last visit with my oldest brother before he died back in 1991He was only 33 years old.
Maybe it's no coincidence that next week I'll be diving into a revision of a novel that involves the death of the MCs sibling.
I love the Pink Glove video and Love Actually. I tear up at the carol scene. And the scene you mentioned. And if I'm not crying by then, the final montage gets me every time.
I have a sad music mix I play when I'm writing emotional scenes. I'm a wreck afterwards, but I expel ALL my demons at once.
My grandfather died on Christmas Day so it's always a melancholic time. It'll be 15 years this Christmas and it's still sad. At least I'll be with my grandmother this year.
This year we're not going home for xmas so it will be the first holiday for my hubby and I without any family nearby.
I kinda get sad towards the holidays, just because another year has come and gone. But then again, I'm an emotional person and even cartoons have made me cry. :)
Must see movies for the season - Love Actually and National Lampoons Christmas Vacation.
Heather:
I have the holiday music on 24/7, too. :-) Vince Guaraldi's album is my fave.
Amy:
Loss can make the holidays seem so incongruent.
E
Mark:
LOL. Imagine me not shocked.
:-)
Kath:
Aww . . . I know that was a tough, tough loss.
E
colleen:
It's my favorite month, too, though this year is a lot more hectic than others . . . it seems, at least.
Merry:
I just arrived at these two very sad, poignant, yet SWEET scenes . . . so it seems so perfect to mine how I feel.
Paul:
I am close with both my sisters. I miss them a lot at the holidays. We are scattered across the country and all three have large families--I have four kids, my middle sister has four kids (including a set of twins), my youngest sister has three kids (including a set of twins born the EXACT SAME day and year as Demon Baby). The economy being what it is, we just can't all fly to see each other. Thankfully, we are all healthy . . . sorry for your loss. I don't care HOW long loss has been there . . . sometimes it just hits you.
E
Melanie:
I laughed and cried my way through the whole thing (Pink Glove).
E
Nadine:
I am one raw emotional weepy mess this time of year--and a lot of it is happy tears, or sentimental tears.
E
Horny.
I meant ornery. Freudian slip.
Oh man. I cry at Christmas comedies. Even silly ones, like the one about the two houses that keep decorating more and more and battle and it's Danny DeVito and what's his name. I cried twice. I cry at everything like that.
I love Love Actually! My favorite Christmas movie is The Santa Clause, though. See, first look at the North Pole and I start crying. I'm so into all the magic. I miss not having kids around who'll share in it!
Love Actually is one of my favorite movies. I wonder about Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, if the couple they played got back together. And I love the English guy who goes to Milwaukee to find girls. That always cracks me up.
I'm Jewish, husband isn't, so the holiday is a fun one for me. A time to put up the decorations and share presents and visit. And eat.
It's not just a chick thing, it's a J.T. thing too. I had a couple of really awful operations when I was little. (I had a giant mass in my neck, softball sized) And I doubt I've cried more than ten times since the first grade. Most of the time it feels like an ocean of tears is lingering behind my eyes, but they never spill over. The last time I remember really crying was in the seventh grade when everybody in my class started calling me a fag.
Well, that was depressing.
I've never been a fan of the holidays, I'm trying hard to fix that though. :)
Natasha:
Even the Christmas comedies have those "sweet" moments. Like even Home Alone. Yup. I hear you.
E
Edie:
I always took their story as they got back together and it was never the same (her speech "would you cut and run . . . or stay . . . never be the same.") She loved the life she made for her kids too much, their security. I found hers very bittersweet, same as Laura Linney's.
E
JT:
Oh, why is middle school such holy hell? And I hear you. I think sometimes I don't cry because if I started, I presume I might not stop.
E
Post a Comment