Signs and Portents and Prophecy
Oct. 6th, 2003 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynLut bought seasons 1 & 2 of Babylon V on DVD today. Seson 2 is a belated birthday present to me, and season 1, he said, he got for himself. We watched the first three episodes of season 1 tonight. Much to my surprise, I remembered all of them.
I didn't start watching Babylon 5 faithfully until, I thought, the end of Season 2. I'm sure that I can't have seen more than a couple (if that) of the first season episodes on their first airing, though it's possible I saw all of season two when it aired; by then I had moved to Ohio to be with my then-boyfriend, Jon, who was an ardent B5 fan.
But I'd definitely seen all three of these. Either I saw them in re-runs, or I watched them on tape from a friend's collection; I'm inclined to think the latter.
In any case, I quite enjoyed seeing them again. It was neat to catch little bits of things that happened early on and connect to much later events. And to realize that, since I never did see season five (no spoilers, now!), I still don't know how the whole story ends. And probably won't until season five is released on DVD, presumably some time next year. But watching the 48+ hours of B5 already available on DVD will probably take me a while. Probably won't take me until mid-January and the release of season four, at this rate, but still, it'll keep me busy for a bit.
I also did some work on Prophecy tonight. October is off to the same woefully slow start that September was, and I determined to turn this around. I haven't, yet, quite, but I made progress.
During perhaps fifteen minutes of my lunch break, I wrote about 300 words of "A Doll's Life" and found myself thinking that it really doesn't take me any time at all to pound out a chunk of that. I probably would've finished it tonight if I hadn't left the file at work. Anyway, I thought "If I can write 300 words in 15 minutes on one story, I ought to be able to do the same for another." Yeah, "A Doll's Life" is closely plotted out. But, frankly, so is Prophecy.
To that end, I decided to approach tonight's writing from a different perspective. Instead of telling myself "I'll do 500 words" I resolved that I would work on it for thirty minutes, and that would be it. No "I must commit the whole evening to it". Nope: thirty minutes.
I didn't set a goal for how much I would write in that thirty minutes. My only criteria was that I had to spend thirty minutes working on or writing the story (looking at the outline to choose a part of the story counted, as would any necessary research -- locating names, etc.-- but just reading snippets I'd already written would not). And if I couldn't think of anything to write, then I could stare at a blank screen for thirty minutes. But I couldn't open a webbrowser or chat with Trask, or otherwise distract myself. I could write, or I could be bored.
I wrote 475 words. Beat being bored. ;) I've decided to re-cast the way the scene I was working on went. It included some amusing dialogue that I think is wasted on the throw-away character I gave it to, so I'm going to put it into the mouth of a more significant figure instead. In any event, the experiment worked well. I think I'll try it again tomorrow night.
But for now, I'm going to give my wrists a break. G'night, Livejounal.
I didn't start watching Babylon 5 faithfully until, I thought, the end of Season 2. I'm sure that I can't have seen more than a couple (if that) of the first season episodes on their first airing, though it's possible I saw all of season two when it aired; by then I had moved to Ohio to be with my then-boyfriend, Jon, who was an ardent B5 fan.
But I'd definitely seen all three of these. Either I saw them in re-runs, or I watched them on tape from a friend's collection; I'm inclined to think the latter.
In any case, I quite enjoyed seeing them again. It was neat to catch little bits of things that happened early on and connect to much later events. And to realize that, since I never did see season five (no spoilers, now!), I still don't know how the whole story ends. And probably won't until season five is released on DVD, presumably some time next year. But watching the 48+ hours of B5 already available on DVD will probably take me a while. Probably won't take me until mid-January and the release of season four, at this rate, but still, it'll keep me busy for a bit.
I also did some work on Prophecy tonight. October is off to the same woefully slow start that September was, and I determined to turn this around. I haven't, yet, quite, but I made progress.
During perhaps fifteen minutes of my lunch break, I wrote about 300 words of "A Doll's Life" and found myself thinking that it really doesn't take me any time at all to pound out a chunk of that. I probably would've finished it tonight if I hadn't left the file at work. Anyway, I thought "If I can write 300 words in 15 minutes on one story, I ought to be able to do the same for another." Yeah, "A Doll's Life" is closely plotted out. But, frankly, so is Prophecy.
To that end, I decided to approach tonight's writing from a different perspective. Instead of telling myself "I'll do 500 words" I resolved that I would work on it for thirty minutes, and that would be it. No "I must commit the whole evening to it". Nope: thirty minutes.
I didn't set a goal for how much I would write in that thirty minutes. My only criteria was that I had to spend thirty minutes working on or writing the story (looking at the outline to choose a part of the story counted, as would any necessary research -- locating names, etc.-- but just reading snippets I'd already written would not). And if I couldn't think of anything to write, then I could stare at a blank screen for thirty minutes. But I couldn't open a webbrowser or chat with Trask, or otherwise distract myself. I could write, or I could be bored.
I wrote 475 words. Beat being bored. ;) I've decided to re-cast the way the scene I was working on went. It included some amusing dialogue that I think is wasted on the throw-away character I gave it to, so I'm going to put it into the mouth of a more significant figure instead. In any event, the experiment worked well. I think I'll try it again tomorrow night.
But for now, I'm going to give my wrists a break. G'night, Livejounal.
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Date: 2003-10-07 09:21 am (UTC)And that is the crowning glory of Babylon 5: continuity. And not just soap-opera continuity, where things change willy-nilly but none of it adds up to anything, but a story's continuity. Things are shown and happen and change for a reason. It all adds up.
This is still quite a rarity in TV, from what I understand. "Murder One" and "24" did/do have an ongoing story to tell. But "episodic" or "soap opera-like" still seem to be the dominant motifs of TV. Of course, I suppose I shouldn't talk, not having watched a current TV show at all in at least two or three years. :) (For all practical purposes, I haven't watched TV since 1997.)
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It exists for educational shows and maybe the occasional movie that I tape and then probably don't watch.
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Date: 2003-10-07 09:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 11:02 am (UTC)