Deanna Repose Oaks

Poetically Captured Moments From the Heart

goals

Big Trouble In Little China

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Every year as Chinese New Year approaches (Year of the Tiger starts February 1, 2022!) I start missing home. When I start missing home, I start eating Chinese food and watching John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China…

My love for this movie started at the dollar theater. My brother wanted to see Rambo: First Blood Part II, but he couldn’t get in to see it at the regular theaters. When dollar theater finally advertised Rambo was playing, my mom said he could go as long as he took me. So, I was roped into going to see this sucky Rambo movie. The dollar theater always showed movies as double features. My mom dropped us off for the Rambo start time and told us to be outside at double feature start time. But the theater screwed up. They switched films and played the second film first.

Picture a theater full of teenage boys biting at the bit to watch Rambo (a hard-core action film). Instead, this weird fantasy martial arts action-comedy starts playing. At the beginning of the movie everyone in the theater was screaming obscenities and booing the film. Yet, by the end of the film the ENTIRE theater jumped to their FEET screaming and clapping for the BEST ending to any movie I have ever seen. Yes, I’m overselling it. The real reason this film’s ending is the best ever is that I was part of an audience which went from spewing venom to standing ovation during the 1 hour and 39-minute film. Remember, this is an audience of teenage boys who wanted to watch Rambo… it was a hard sell from the get-go, but it won us all over – EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US.

I don’t remember the Rambo movie, the only part I even remember about that movie was being outside convincing my mom let us stay. But I still remember the power Big Trouble in Little China had over us. I remember the cheering at the end. I’m always searching for an ending like this – one that has the power to stand the test of time. Hopefully, I’ll write one one day…

Until then, I will watch Big Trouble in Little China yearly as the world celebrates Chinese New Year while reminiscing about the best theater experience I have ever had, eating Chinese food, and missing San Francisco.

Journal #52

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Well, I am keeping up with the challenge of writing 100 words a day for 100 days. While I am editing, I’m not writing as many words as required. I’m also not writing every day. As of this post, I am still AVERAGING 100 words/day, so I’m putting that down as an accomplishment in my book. (My book of accomplishments, not my novel.)

Another accomplishment I have achieved: a poem of mine has garnered enough interest that I have been PAID for it. Wait, what? Yes, PAID. It has been a real long time since a single poem of mine has earned money… I cannot believe it!

Now, if I can just stick through this editing mess and keep putting one foot in front of the other long enough to get this book PUBLISHED. Finding an editor has been a struggle that I have yet to overcome. Finding someone with just the right talents at just the right price with the availability with their timeline is proving to be more difficult than I imagined when I set out on this journey. I didn’t think I was that picky or that cheap! But, for my book of accomplishments, I’m adding “learned something new about myself this week” as one of my entries. Celebrating the small wins, no matter how small!

Journal #25

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I’m keeping up with my writing goals!!! I tried to get back to writing poems, but for some reason, I am not feeling it. I haven’t written poetry in such a long time. But, I am still writing.

I want to blame COVID for my lack of poetry, but it is being blamed for everything in this world, I’m giving it a break. I feel there is just too much chaos in the world for me to be able to decipher and make happiness out of what I am seeing/feeling. Even revisiting media of “simpler times” (read: 80’s movies) makes me nervous and anxious – the world is no longer as it was, and never will be again. Sadness abounds. Hard to write about love when I am so sad.

Yes, writing. I just submitted a piece to a publisher. Not sure where it will go, but it gives me something to look forward to. And, it gave my writing somewhere to go once it was done. It was a happy piece, so difficult to write in these chaotic times. That took a lot out of me.

Looking forward to next week!

Journal #24

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I am trying my best to write daily now. I am no longer counting emails and work documents as writing, either. I didn’t realize how much I substituted business writing for actual writing… until I stopped counting. I am not truly fulfilled because my heart is not in it. My soul is not there. I want more for myself. I am now actively working to hone my craft with a renewed desire. I started acting and setting goals.

Goal #1: meet new writers. CHECK – I joined 3 new writer groups on Facebook this week.

Goal #2: publish something longer than a poem. I’m up to 3K in a story, need about another 9K for a possible anthology entry.

Goal #3: Keep this journal going on a weekly basis, for at least two months.

Such a short list, such achievable goals. I will accomplish them.

(and I’ll keep telling myself this every day until they are all achieved)

Journal #18

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I write for me, not for the reader. Maybe that is my mistake? I am focused on the catharsis that happens when I write to release my emotions, not the result of the work I am writing. Readers like results, along with feeling the catharsis. So, I am reviewing my process to become a better writer. Don’t know if it will work or not, as there are a lot of kinks to work out.

I know the why of my writing, just not the how of it. The words are always just THERE when I need them. The stories, poems, journals, they just flow. Each time I try to control them, it ends badly. I start overanalyzing and editing before the work is complete, to the point where the cuts are too deep and the story is lost. Or, I listen to grammar checkers or readers that don’t take into account style and grace. I beat myself up constantly even before it gets to post. I have to remember that writing is an art, we need to have a “spirit line” (mistakes that make it art). But I hardly ever do.

Because I am so critical of the works I read, I have a hard time not being even more critical with the works I write. My prime example: these journal entries, which I started just to get me writing more than poems. I struggle to prove a point or say something meaningful or be there for someone. In doing so, I want perfection, but I am not perfect. I need to remember why I write these entries: to write more than poems, not to attain perfection. I have a hard time remembering that, too.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I am going to mess up, and I have to allow myself to mess up and learn from the resulting disaster. Figure out the “how to do it better” part after it is done and stop thinking that everything will go so horribly wrong I will never recover before I even give it a chance to fail.

I’m going to add this to my goals for 2020: stop beating myself up so much. Hopefully, it will be a goal I can attain? I guess I will keep you posted.

Journal #16

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I attended a craft meeting tonight, and while there, discussing the ins and outs of writing, I found myself compelled to write a poem. I wrote it, spur of the moment. At the end of the meeting, I read it aloud to the attendees who watched me write it. Their praise is daunting…

The drivel that I write sometimes hits me sideways like that. I don’t know why I still call it drivel, or why I think so little of what I write, even after praise. I guess I think it is just natural for me to string words together to form thoughts, and I need to disparage it because there are so many out there who struggle with stringing their words together every day.

When I look around at what writing is out there, both the good and the bad, I wonder if I just “fit in” where I am, or if there is a bigger place for me with this. Like, is there something I need to say, and if in saying it will I be changing the world? My world? Their world? My character’s world? My cat’s world?

Can my red vase on the table in the back room still be sitting there 100 years from now?

Like I said, daunting. I feel I am not worthy because I don’t allow myself the chance to be worthy because those worthy enough to write carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. Think about the authors of the Bible: Matthew, Peter, Paul, Luke. Then think: Shakespeare, Chaucer, Joyce, Shelley, Stoker, Poe, Dickens, Austen, King.

Yes, I don’t consider myself worthy, and I never will, even if my name does get added to that list. Because then I will become lazier, consider things like attending craft meetings to hone my skills beneath me, or something to that effect. Rest on my laurels as my mom would say.

Yet, on the flip side of that, all I want is to get lost in stringing my words together in ways that other people enjoy. Maybe one day, I will even get paid to do it. Maybe. Here’s hoping!