HP Wombat

In my Spanish class in High School, we watched a movie that was in Spanish. I have absolutely no memory of what it's called, but if you can help me discover it, I would be very thankful!

It was a very dark drama, about a brother and sister (or perhaps a girlfriend and boyfriend) who wanted to go to America. In particular, they were intrigued by the idea of going to the bathroom inside the house, and flushing it away. Toilets seemed like a totally cool thing. I think it was supposed to be in the 70's or 80's, but it could have been a bit earlier or later.

Anyway, they are trying to go through many countries to get up to America, and experience a lot of hardship along the way. In particular, I remember a scene that involves a large arena, like a football (soccer) stadium, though I can't remember what happens. There are a lot of people killed, so it's very likely rated R or PG-13. It's in Spanish and was only subtitled in English.

The woman (maybe the man, too) ends up in America in this awful apartment with a disgusting toilet.

If you have any idea of what this movie might be, let me know! It's one of those things that has been bugging me for years. I remember how that movie made me feel, more than the details of the movie itself, and would like to watch it again. Thank you, Y!A

Is there a term for someone performing a negative action in order to receive media attention?

Or, more specifically, performing a secret act of vandalism in order to bring media attention to whatever it was that was vandalized?

Don't worry, this is for a book I'm writing, not an actual tactic I'm planning :)

This is just a little writing exercise from today, and I'm interested to see what people think. Do you like it or not, what parts seem weird or sound awkward, or what parts are interesting or intriguing. I'm trying to learn how to judge my own writing's weaknesses and strengths, and any opinions would be welcome! Thanks B&A!

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Our house is old. Not fun old or vintage old. It’s f*cking old. Falling apart, smelly and it’s all we can afford. The only person I can invite over without being embarrassed is Jill, because she lives in a trailer with her grandma and really can’t judge me.

Today, Jill and I were going to sit out in the sun and read magazines in our bathing suits. Of course, it started pouring rain and hasn’t stopped for three hours and the power’s gone out. We stare out my bedroom window like those kids from Cat in the Hat, making clouds on the glass with our breath and drawing hearts and flowers with our fingers.

“Do you still have that Mall Madness game?” Jill asks.

“Mall Madness? What are you, twelve years old?”

“Come on Alisha. My grandma’s not picking me up for another hour and a half and I’m bored!”

I hate that. I don’t want to be The Boring Friend. Even though I’m pretty sure Mom sold Mall Madness at a garage sale, I stand up, stretch my back, grab the cinnamon apple candle from Bath & Body Works and lead the way to the attic.

Technically, I’m not supposed to go up into the attic, ever since that one day when I misstepped and plunged my foot through the insulation in Mom and Dad’s bathroom ceiling. But I was clumsy back then, and I’m not as scared of their threats to ground me as I used to be.

Jill’s asthma starts acting up the instant we get to the top of the attic stairs, and she whips out her inhaler and takes a few hits. The cinnamon apple candle is surprisingly bright, or maybe our eyes are just getting used to the darkness. We walk across the beams to the far end of the huge, dusty attic, to where there’s an actual floor. There are a few boxes of old stuff here. Baby photos, my first pair of shoes, my mom’s old sewing machine. Jill grabs a Good Housekeeping magazine from the 1980s and plops into the wooden rocking chair to read it as I dig through a box.

“Oh my god, look at their shoulder pads!” she squeals. I hold up the candle and giggle at the big-haired models with jeans pulled up to their belly buttons. Jill rocks backward and a loud snapping noise makes us both freeze.

“What’d you do?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Did I rock onto something?”

She leans forward, bringing the curved legs of the chair with her. The candlelight reveals a broken slab of wood on the ground.

“Get up,” I tell her. “There’s something here.”

Jill pulls the rocking chair out of the way so I can see better. The piece of wood is like a latch to a trapdoor. I didn’t know there were two ways to get into our attic.

“It must lead into my parents closet,” I say, trying to envision the layout of the second floor below us. But that can’t be right. I look over to the patched-up hole in the middle of the attic where their bathroom is, and their closet is right next to that.

“Open it!” Jill says. “It’ll be like opening the hatch on Lost.”

I never watched Lost so I don’t know what she’s talking about. All I know is that this could keep me from being The Boring Friend, so I pull the rest of the broken latch away from the trapdoor and pull it open.

I follow a few agents and editors on twitter, and they are GOLD MINES when it comes to giving out great resources for writers.

This map was just shared: http://www.yahighway.com/p/publishing-road-map.htm...

It's totally interactive! Every single topic on the image is clickable and has a list of blog posts and articles about them! It's my new favorite resource for high-level research on parts of publication I haven't gotten into yet.

What are your favorite resources, from books to websites to twitter feeds or ANYTHING! Or maybe click around that map and share what your favorite article is.

Happy writing, B&A :D

Three in the morning is the best time to break into an animal shelter. I’m not going near the animals, but they can sense when people are nearby, so I have to be careful.

The back door is locked, but there’s a window right next to it, covered with “found” posters and a sticker that tells me the place has a security system. Even though I’m wearing gloves, I take off my t-shirt and wrap my knuckles with it. The shelter can hardly afford to keep their animals fed, so I know they can’t afford a security system. A 50¢ sticker, though, they can totally afford. Doesn’t fool me. I punch without hesitation and the glass shards fall like raindrops. No alarm.

I shake the glass out of my shirt and pull it back over my head. With the “Found” posters still hanging, it doesn’t even look like the window is broken, so I rip the posters down. I wonder if I should piss on them, for good measure, but I can’t remember if piss has DNA in it or not. Better play it safe. I prop the door open with the rubber doorstop and pull the rusty wheelbarrow into the hallway.

I get a little lost on my way to the supply room. When I scoped the place a few days ago, pretending to be looking for a puppy for my girlfriend’s sixteenth birthday, it was from the front door, not the back. I end up taking a wrong turn and find myself in someone’s dingy, dark office.

Finally, I open the right door and there they are: stacks of cheap, generic-brand pet food and cat litter. There isn’t very much. Like I said, they’re practically bankrupt and can’t afford to keep the animals alive, so it doesn’t take me long to pile it all into the wheelbarrow. I should do it in two trips to get it all, but I haul as much out as I can in one trip, leaving a few bags behind. It made the storage room look even more pathetic, to have those few bags, so it was even better.

Once the pet food is loaded into the back of my uglyass pickup truck, I get the spray paint out of the front seat. I’m scared of waking up the animals, so I decide to make it a one-color job instead of a three-color, like I’d been planning.

The guy who ran the shelter, Ramon, is flamboyantly homosexual, so I spray the room with as many “Homo”s and “F*ggot”s as I can manage. I can’t decide if I should throw in a Jesus Fish or a Swastika. I’d been working on my Swastikas, so I make a big one on the ground, where the dog and cat food used to be.

When I’m finished, I’m sweating all over the place, even though it’s pretty chilly outside. I cover the food with a blue tarp and drive away.

I pull up to Gary’s house and put one load of the dog food over my shoulder. His place is a dump, with broken sh*t filling his front porch. It's home for this week at least. He’s a total crack-head and is awake almost all the time, so he’s not pissed when I knock on his front door.

His face lights up when he sees the dog food.

“Told ya I could hook you up,” I say. “I’ve got a couple more.”

It’s crazy, but Gary has the most adorable purebred toy poodle I’ve ever seen. The thing looks so feminine, but it’s actually a boy dog named Hobgoblin. Gary just calls him Hob. I don’t know where he got the dog, but I just know he can’t feed it and I don’t like animals going hungry.

Gary says I can stay as long as I want, because of the dog food, which is good news since I want to stay a while this time. I fall asleep on his couch, exhausted, to the sound of Hob eating the dog food from his dish in the kitchen.

In the morning, I turn on the TV before I’m even fully awake. The local station, WTFF (you can’t make this **** up), has the hot reporter at the no-kill animal shelter. I grin and turn it up, careful not to put it too loud in case Gary has somehow fallen asleep.

“…this senseless hate crime,” she says breathlessly into the microphone. “The Harrington Shelter would have been be forced to close its doors if not for the generous donations that have been pouring in all morning long.”

The camera cuts to the storage room. The swastika had been covered up by the most expensive brands of dog and cat food that could be found in the grocery store.

I sigh and put my hands behind my head, letting myself relax. It’s too easy. Every d*mn time I worry so much about whether or not it will work, but it’s always wasted worry. I need to learn.

People hate when bad sh*t happens to good establishments. If I make it happen, then good always follows. Without me, this animal shelter would have gone out of business. I just bought them time to get their act together, financially, and bought them advertising that they wouldn’t have gotten in any other way.

My name isn’t Robin Hood, but it d*mn as well should be. So I tell people my name is Rob. Because that’s what I do, and that’s who I am. I’m a legend, even if nobody knows it yet.

Other long-term B&A peeps know I've been querying agents for my novel and today I got a request for a full manuscript! The agent posted a blog and said she got around 250 queries this week and asked 5 of them for their manuscripts. I was one of the 5! I'm so excited, especially after a handful of rejections from other agents :)

So what are you writing today, B&A? It's Friday, so are you letting yourself write something fun? Fanfiction? Are you working on a long-term project or just doodling around with some writing prompts for practice?

So everyone's always posting bits of their stories and their prologues and their beginnings... but I thought it'd be interesting to post my ending, my epilogue, to see what people thought. If this was the only thing you had, would you be interested in the story, even if it took place after all the action?

Just curious :)

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A construction crew of thirty men arrived at the city zoo to begin scheduled demolition. The men were irate when they saw the destroyed entrance and the zoo beyond, thinking another demolition crew had been hired and begun their work. The upturned van confused them, and their own unmoved equipment confused them even more.

Down one of the narrow paths, they heard laughter. Crazy, maniacal laughter, fit for a cartoon villain. A group went to investigate and discovered a man who called himself Fuzz, trapped in a perfect cage of thick, unbreakable bamboo. They asked him what happened, and he began talking like a man who’d completely lost his mind. Stories of a botched kidnapping and a superhero with the power to grow plant cages, and a zoo filled with wild animals that somehow disappeared overnight. The demolition crew laughed and laughed until the foreman told them to cut the man out and get to work. The foreman drove Fuzz to the psychiatric ward of the hospital.

That day, each of the thirty men found strange footprints and impossible plants as they destroyed the zoo one building and enclosure at a time. The only difference between each of them and the crazy man is they knew to keep their suspicions to themselves. That night, one of the men told his young daughter a bedtime story about the footprints and plants he’d found. He knew that she would be the only one who would ever believe him.

I've submitted short stories before, but I've been working on my novel since NaNoWriMo 2010, and finally submitted it to an agent and publisher today! :D This is my first time querying for a novel. I'm unfortunately one of those people who can't hold her feelings inside, so you all are victims of my excitement.

As for a question, I'm curious about the reactions people give me about my story. I wonder if they are normal or abnormal, so I'm wondering...

How do people react when you describe your story to them?

Do they bring up what other stories it reminds them of?

Do they smile and nod stupidly and you think to yourself 'if they read it they'd understand better'?

Do they tell you how they think you should publish your book?

Do they mention other people they know who have published?

Do you discover that you have friends who are also writing novels that you never knew about?

Do they tell you to remember them when you're famous?

Do they tell you "don't quit your day job"?

Answer any or all questions, or add any other reactions you get when you open up about your story to people.

Hooray! :D

I have a friend who gets a bit up in arms when I say I've read a book but finds out that I listened to the audiobook. "You didn't read it, you listened to it."

To me, even though the experiences aren't exactly the same, it gets confusing when I have to make the distinction between the two, especially because half the time I can't remember if I actually read the physical book or listened to the audiobook.

Would it annoy you if someone said "I read Harry Potter" but they just listened to the audiobook? Do you think the experiences are different enough that there should always be a distinction, or is it fine to use "read" interchangeably between physical books and audiobooks? Thanks, B&A for your opinions!

There's this brand new project on YouTube that's a modern take on Pride & Prejudice done in vlog form, called Lizzie Bennet's Diaries. I'm basically obsessed with it, even though there's hardly 16 minutes of video uploaded in all.

I adore it, but I'm not a huge P&P fan (I just read it once), so I'm wondering what die-hard P&P fans think of it vs people who are just casual fans.

First video (of four)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KisuGP2lcPs

Also, who's your favorite character in Pride & Prejudice? I always loved Jane :)

I was 12 when Titanic was first released, so as a 27 year old, the idea of young teens seeing a movie that was a huge part of my adolescence is kind of heartwarming and nostalgic. I just want to know, for any teens who had never seen the movie before and saw it in theaters this week, what did you think of it? Did you think it was cheesy or outdated, or does it have a "classic" kind of feel to it? How does it measure up to the movies you're typically into? Any other thoughts?

Thanks ^_^

The press release just came out

http://leakynews.com/jkrs-new-book-titled-the-casu...

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When Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock.

Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.

Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…Pagford is not what it first seems.

And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults.

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What do you think? Are you going to read it just because J.K. Rowling wrote it? Are you going to wait to see what friends/critics say before buying it? Are you afraid it will be no good, or are you sort of evilly hoping it will be no good (schadenfreude, after all)?

Answer any or all questions :)

It's opinion, obviously, and they're different stories but if you have any commentary, go for it! :D Pick your favorite!

------ Beginning 1 ------

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.

Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.) But my mom believed I required treatment, so she took me to see my Regular Doctor Jim, who agreed that I was veritably swimming in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression, and that therefore my meds should be adjusted and also I should attend a weekly Support Group.

This Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of dying.

-------- Beginning 2 ----------

In the past week (unquestionably the worst seven days of her life), she’d lost the ability to distance herself from the memories. Too often lately in her dreams it was 1974; she was a teenager again, coming of age in the shadow of a lost war, riding her bike beside her best friend in a darkness so complete it was like being invisible. The place was relevant only as a reference point, but she remembered it in vivid detail: a meandering ribbon of asphalt bordered on either side by gullies of murky water and hillsides of shaggy grass. Before they met, that road seemed to go nowhere at all; it was just a country lane named after an insect no one had ever seen in this rugged blue and green corner of the world.

-------- Beginning 3 --------

I gaze at the small, crisp, burned-out black husks scattered across the chipped white paint of the windowsills. It is hard to believe that they were ever alive. I wonder what it would be like to be shut up in this airless glass box, slowly baked for two long months by the relentless sun, able to see the outdoors—the wind shaking the green trees right there in front of you—hurling yourself again and again at the invisible wall that seals you off from everything that is real and alive and necessary, until eventually you succumb: scorched, exhausted, overwhelmed by the impossibility of the task. At what point does a fly give up trying to escape through a closed window—do its survival instincts keep it going until it is physically capable of no more, or does it eventually learn after one crash too many that there is no way out? And what point do you decide that enough is enough?

So obviously there's http://www.agentquery.com/ and Writer's Market books... but when I went to a writer's conference, one of the agents there suggested that the best way to find an agent that would work for you is to look in the acknowledgements of a book you REALLY enjoy, and see if the author thanks their agent. Then look that agent up on the internet to see if they're accepting submissions.

Are there any other ways of finding agents that you know of? Thanks!

I just finished editing a short story and it's one of my few stabs at horror AND at writing in second person (trying new things, as always!), so I need some feedback as to whether or not it strikes that tone of fear that I'm looking for. It's a bit of a slow burn, but if you stick through you'll get the payoff!

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You are old enough to know by now that there are not monsters watching you sleep, or murderers in the bathroom while you bathe, or dark creatures behind your feet when you walk up the stairs.

You are mature and intellectual, so you know that when you're lying in bed and the power's gone out, there's nothing crouched in the closet beyond the candlelight’s reach. There's nothing behind the shower curtain, even when an odd shadow catches your eye and makes you stop and wonder what cast it. There is no hollow-eyed woman in the mirror across an unlit room, even though there’s an unearthly tingle somewhere deep in your spine that tells you she's watching.

continued:

http://www.worthyofpublishing.com/chapter.asp?chap...

I just finished editing a short story, fit for today's spooky holiday! It's one of my few stabs at horror, so I need some feedback as to whether or not it strikes that tone of fear that I'm looking for. It's a bit of a slow burn, but if you stick through you'll get the payoff!

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You are old enough to know by now that there are not monsters watching you sleep, or murderers in the bathroom while you bathe, or dark creatures behind your feet when you walk up the stairs.

You are mature and intellectual, so you know that when you're lying in bed and the power's gone out, there's nothing crouched in the closet beyond the candlelight’s reach. There's nothing behind the shower curtain, even when an odd shadow catches your eye and makes you stop and wonder what cast it. There is no hollow-eyed woman watching you from the mirror across an unlit room, even though there’s an unearthly tingle somewhere deep in your spine that tells you she’s watching.

continued:

http://www.worthyofpublishing.com/chapter.asp?chap...

I've never done this before, and haven't seen it done very often, but the idea of it intrigues me and I want to get your opinions.

Do you think it could be effective to "spoil" the ending of a book within the book itself?

In one part of the story, the narrating character (who talks to the audience quite a lot) basically divulges the fact that a character is going to die long before it actually happens. This death is sort of the emotional climax... but by giving it away, I think it makes it even MORE emotional when it happens, because you know what's coming.

What do you think? Do you think this "spoils" in a good way, or a bad way? Would you do it or write it differently?

------- excerpt -------

“Of course, I'm being rude. I'm spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because I don't have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me. There are many things to think of. There is much story.”

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Thanks for the input!

When answering questions in the Books & Authors section, it's very helpful to post links to books and their reviews on Amazon, especially when people are asking for recommendations based on books they enjoy. Why won't Yahoo Answers allow links to Amazon? I have been redirecting questioners to Goodreads.com instead, but there's no "search inside" feature that allows someone to preview the book there, which is a big deal when it comes to deciding on a book.

Writing is about the big goals as much as it is about the little ones. What goal, big or little, have you hit recently that you're celebrating?

Did you write a certain number of days in a row?

Did you pass 20,000 or 30,000 or some other milestone with word count?

Have you recently overcome writer's block?

Are you finished with a draft?

I am celebrating because I am officially able to say that I've written a book. I finished the first draft early this morning at 18 words away from 100,000 words, and feel like I'm on the top of the world! Or maybe that's just the sleep deprivation talking?

So what are you celebrating? What is your next milestone you're working towards?

Just looking for some reactions. This is a scene from an unfinished book, around Chapter 3. It was my first attempt at Young Adult so I'm just looking to see if people like it, if there's any helpful criticism or encouragement out there.

Thanks!

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Laughing, they entered the art room.

“Hello?” Jasmine said. “Anyone left in here?”

No answer. The room was dark and it smelled like dried paint and glue. It felt like last night at the concert all over again: the adrenalin, the laughter, and the hoarse voices. Nathan pulled her over to the teacher’s desk, far away from the windows and out of sight of anyone passing by.

“What is it?” Jasmine asked. She felt giddy skipping lunch, glad to exchange the awkwardness between her and Mary for whatever this was between her and Nathan.

“First,” he said, “I want to do this.”

Nathan leaned in and kissed her. She expected it, but it still caught her off guard, like waiting for the toaster to pop up with toast. She wondered if this was what it was what a first kiss was supposed to feel like. It wasn’t that exciting, at first, since she was mainly worried about messing it up. That is until she reminded herself that he could be kissing pretty much any girl, but had chosen her even though she was just a sophomore and he was a junior. The fluttering feelings that she expected to accompany a first kiss came over her like a wave.

Still, it was all new to her and she had no idea what she was doing, so when their teeth bonked together uncomfortably they both laughed a little, and she pulled away.

“Does this mean that we’re exclusive now?” she asked.

“I’d say so.” Nathan smiled.

Anxious to fill the silence, she cleared her throat and asked, “So what did you want to talk to me about?”

He grabbed two hip-height stools, metal with wooden tops, smeared with years-old dried paint and etched with initials. Jasmine hopped up onto one of the stools, and Nathan perched on the other.

“Last night, after the concert,” he began, “remember how I said my parents wouldn’t flip out about me being home so late?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, I sort of lied. I didn’t want you to feel bad for me or anything, or regret inviting me.” He frowned, looking sheepish.

Jasmine sighed in relief. She wasn’t enthralled about him lying, but the fact that he was so upset over something so little more than made up for it. All day she’d been afraid he was going to announce that his family was moving, or that he was having second thoughts about liking Jasmine, or something that meant they couldn’t be together.

“Is that all?” Jasmine said. “I’d never regret inviting you.”

“That’s not all,” Nathan said. “I just…When I came home after curfew, I was expecting my parents to flip out, but they didn’t, even though I knew they were awake. Their bedroom lights were on, so I thought they were waiting up for me. But they didn’t come down to yell at me, or tell me to come up there. It was like they were ignoring me.”

“That’s lucky. My parents would have totally lost it.”

Nathan scratched his short hair. “I mean I’m glad I didn’t get in trouble, but I was so confused as to what they were doing. So I went up to listen to them, to see why they waited up for me, but weren’t going to yell at me.”

“You went to listen at your PARENTS BEDROOM?” Was her new boyfriend a pervert or just an idiot?

Nathan caught on to what Jasmine was thinking. “No!” he emphasized. “No, no, NO! I could hear them TALKING when I was coming up the stairs. So I started listening. Then I heard them say your name.”

“My name?” Jasmine said. “Do they even know I exist?”

"Not from me. I don't talk to them about girls. But whoever told them also knew that I asked you to the Thanksgiving Dance."

"But I didn't tell anyone you asked me to go with you."

"Neither did I."

Jasmine, feeling suddenly paranoid, asked, "Then how did they find out?"