Straight from the horse's mouth...

My absolute favorite quote from class last night (and there were many gems to pick from, trust me):

"Oh forget about the dramatic arc! You don't need to worry about the dramatic arc!"

Cut to half the class looking absolutely crushed, confused or a mixture of both.

This one's for you...

Think about how often people think about love. How to find it, where to find it, how to keep it. Arguably, a great deal of the time, people are thinking about love.

Let me tell you what love is. Love is a kick in the ass when you need it most. Love is rubbing someone's back while they throw up. Love is making grits, because the person you love is crabby and well, they need buttery, salty grits. With extra salt.

Love isn't a big ring, or a nice house, or a fast car. Maybe, sometimes, Love is behind those things, but all of those things, eventually, fade away. Love is forever.

Love tells you how great you are and gives you a reality check when you need it. Love helps you do things you are scared of. Love reminds you who you are and what your place in the world is - and what it could be.

Kermit the Frog, Journalist Extraordinaire...

THIS is what made me, at the tender age of 3 1/2, want to be a journalist...

Tiny Geniuses

Faith: There aren't 24 hours in a day.

Me: Really?

Faith: Yeah. There are, like, thousands.

Me: Really? How do you know?

Faith: Because when you are waiting for something or when I get bored, the clock goes really slow. Like - tick [dramatic pause] tock. tick. tock. And its so slow and thats why there are thousands!

Me: Wow. Genius.

*****************

Faith: [with hoody on head, laughing] I'm a dementor! I'm here to take away all your happiness!

Your Craft

As you walk in the door, which you find at the end of a very long and very dusty hallway, you catch glimpses of them through the glass panes in the door. They are old and young, male and female. You see them as they present themselves in the very first moments: the older man with three novels under his belt, the woman in the boots concerned about "process" with her finished novel sitting in the bright orange folder in front of her. The obnoxious hip indie chick and the other hip indie chick (not as obnoxious) - this is Los Angeles, you knew they would be here. The shy girls in the corner and the slightly arrogant man sitting next to them who knows all about points of view and narrators. Here they are. This is what you signed up for. You are terrified.

You write. You listen. The instructor doesn't remember your name, even joking about how he won't remember your name until the ninth week, when class is almost over. His eye wanders and you aren't sure where to look. You don't talk much, because you don't like talking. That is why you are a writer. You are protective and not sure of talking about "it" - process, craft, your characters. Buzzword after buzzword. But there are no rules. You aren't ready to expose Nellie to them yet.

You write furiously for two minutes and then realize you will have to read what you wrote. This is it. This is what you signed up for. You read your passage, confidently, surprised at what came out of you. You think you heard appreciative murmurs. Maybe you were hearing things.

You love this.

20 Questions ... upon seeing "Vantage Point" *

1. Gwyneth, are the Coldplay residuals not coming in like they used to? You deserve SO much better than "Ironman".

2. Rex, what is your deal with Angie?

3. Sigourney Weaver, does it physically hurt you to recite dialogue this bad?

4. Are they seriously going to show the same thing over and over with only minute differences in POV?

5. When did Dennis Quaid start taking all of Harrison Ford's roles?

6. What exactly does Dennis do to maintain those abs?

7. Wait - is Dennis actually the poor man's Harrison Ford?

8. Was this originally slated to debut on the Lifetime network?

9. Or as a stand-alone episode of "Days of our Lives"?

10. Do they really use doubles for the president? This could explain so much of the past eight years.

11. Love him, but what is with Forest Whitaker's left eye?

12. Why, Foxy, why? I know it must be frustrating to work on a show with no discernible forward-moving plot line, but you can do better things than this with your summers off.

13. Did they just do a close-up of a menacingly squinting Dennis?

14. With dramatic music swelling in the background?

15. Was that line of Spanish dialogue that just came out of Matthew Fox's mouth dubbed by a jovial Telemundo news anchor?

16. Did I just burst out laughing in the middle of this very serious movie? Yes, yes I did...

17. Did I just hear the majority of the theatre burst out in laughter as well? So it isn't just me...

18. What are the odds that the two bad guys would get killed in that crash, yet the president would survive?

19. Will I enjoy this movie more in five years when it is played in continuous rotation every third weekend on TNT and I have nothing better to watch while I clean house?

20. Seriously, wouldn't it have been marginally better with Harrison Ford?

* If you haven't, don't.

Makes Me Laugh

Kermit? Speaking German? Love it. I have no idea what he is saying but it makes me so happy!

A New Aspiration

After a weekend of being sick and feeling sorry for myself, while simultaneously watching every single show that Food Network has to offer - even the crappy ones with that annoying host sporting a porcupine hairdo - I have decided that in my next life, I want to be Giada De Laurentiis.

She seems so happy and nice and shiny, like the kind of girl that shaves her legs every single day and never forgets to wash her face before going to bed. She probably never gets depressed and stays in bed all day, eating bright orange macaroni and cheese directly from the microwavable container that it came in. And most magical of all, she makes it seem completely possible that, just like her, I can whip up a homemade mushroom parmesan-topped tart simply with the ingredients I have on hand in my fridge.

I'm onto you

Leaving the movie theatre recently, the boyfriend casually glances up at the GIANT poster above our heads – the one featuring Scarlett Johanssan in medieval garb which makes it appear as though her breasts might jump out and attack someone at any given moment - and says extremely nonchalantly ... "hey, that looks like it might be good! We should see it." As though he hadn’t been spending the entire previous two hours since we first walked by said movie poster plotting exactly how to drop that line casually into conversation.

I am so onto you.

And I'm not alone - in an extremely unscientific poll, two out of every three girlfriends have experienced this EXACT same conversation.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

I wouldn't claim to be a runner. Rather, I claim it now, but only very quietly to certain people. To a large contingent of those who know me, I was the girl that read at recess; the one who would go to great lengths to avoid the infamous "running the mile" day in P.E. I think I actually got a "B" in P.E. once.

When I recently told a friend that I was training for a half-marathon, he actually laughed out loud. Not in a funny, LOL-type way as we were talking online, but an actual hearty face-to-face laugh. I get it - if you had told me ten years ago that I'd be training for a half-marathon, I would have laughed too. Even louder.

Yeah, I still run funny (to the boy who made quacking noises at me during PE in 8th grade: heard you were in rehab - hope things are looking up) but who cares? I'm not the fastest, or the best, but that is what is great about growing up - no one keeps score anymore. There is infinitely less judging - at least not the overt, pass the note in class kind of judging.

The best part of all is the secret language of runners: the head nod or smile as we pass each other in the streets. It keeps me going. Cheesy, yet satisfying. And if they are running with a cute small dog wearing a sweater that I secretly wish I could ran by and steal, all the better.

Millennial Angst?

I have to confess, I didn't even know I was a millennial until a few months ago. Apparently, "60 Minutes" ran a story on us. I came into work the morning after the piece aired and was asked, "when were you born?" My reply was quickly followed by, "Oh. you're one of those millennials." [Insert judgmental silence here.]

I momentarily panicked - what was I? How could I not know this seemingly crucial piece of information about my own identity? (I'm not a frequent watcher of "60 Minutes", obviously.) Who lumped me in with all of these crazed yet dependent over-achievers? I did some research, finding out that it was extremely un-millennial of me to not know that I was a millennial.

Allegedly, we are...
smart (check)
goal-oriented (compulsive list maker here)
hopeful (sure, why not)
tech-savvy (I didn't own an iPod until literally last week...and its a shuffle)
lazy (nope)
uber-connected (I still don't have an internet connection at home)

I'm not quite sure I fit the mold. I'm not even sure I like the fact that a mold exists. With millions of us out there running around, having our parents call in sick for us, surely we aren't all alike?