Movie Review: The Judge

The Judge with Robert Downey Jr and Robert Duvall is one of those movies that you may walk out of the theatre talking about. I did, but it wasn't so much out of wonderment and appreciation as confusion because it tries to do way too much. It's a coming home film...Downey returns to Indiana from Chicago to attend his mother's funeral. He happens to be a crackerjack attorney so when his estranged father, the judge, is arrested, it falls to Downey to defend him. That plot was fine, as was one, maybe two of the subplots. But The Judge bites off far more than it can chew and a good part of the extraneous gunk gets stuck in the throat. Duvall as the judge is brilliant, maybe even Oscar worthy. Downey Jr. shows more range than I expected. All the acting is excellent but the script falters at the end...which takes about forty-five minutes too long to arrive. 3/5

My Five (Plus One!) Favorite Safety Tips

I’ve been tweeting personal safety tips for about a year now (@dougcummings3) and just followed those up with an e-book, Escaping the O-Zone: Intuition, Situational Awareness and Staying Safe which will be released Nov 1. The “O” in O-Zone stands for “oblivious” . . . that happy, unaware place in the clouds where a good portion of us put our minds while we’re not otherwise occupied. It’s nearly impossible to react to a threat from the O-Zone. By the time we hear our intuition sounding an alarm, that speeding car, angry dog, or armed predator, is already upon us.

Staying out of the O-Zone takes work. Here are five (plus one!) tactics I use to stay focused on my surroundings.

·      Approach every new environment, whether it’s a restaurant, a bar, the lobby of a building or a busy street, as though you’ve arranged to meet someone there. Keep your head up and your eyes moving. Listen for sudden sounds that break the pattern of ambient noise around you.

·      Look for a way out the moment you walk in. Mark in your mind where the exits are in every building and the fastest way to get to them. Outdoors, imagine where you could reach quickly in case of an emergency.

·      Always know your location. Whether you stop for gas, use a parking garage, duck into a coffee shop or go bar hopping, note the address. If it’s not posted, ask.

·      In your cellular phone’s address book, add ICE as a prefix to the names of relatives or friends who you would want first responders to contact In Case of Emergency. If you lock your phone, use an indelible pen to write the number of your closest contact on the case (will also help recovery if your phone is lost).

·      Avoid using headphones or texting while walking, running or biking. Eyes focused on a screen aren’t watching your surroundings. Listening to music and/or audio books places you in the O-Zone.

·      The most basic tip of all: at home, in the office, in your car, in hotel/motel rooms, lock your doors and latch your windows. That simple act may be enough to keep out an intruder.

My Advice to Aspiring Writers: WRITE. EVERY. DAY.

That most excellent site for writers and readers, Goodreads, has a section that offers the opportunity to ask questions of the writers. One question I chose to answer: What advice would I give to an aspiring author?

I said, Write. Every. Day.

It all counts, whether it’s a blog post, a long email to a friend, an imaginative shopping list, a short story, a poem, or a novel. Exercise your creative muscles for as long as you can, as often as you can. Asa Baber, the late, great Playboy columnist was the first writing teacher to tell me that creative muscles atrophy from lack of usage the same as all the others. I have found that to be true a hundred times.

Even if all you're doing is sketching out scenes in your notebook, play with ideas. Write character descriptions on bus, train or plane rides or during your break at work. Take notes on locations every time you go somewhere new. Watch for interesting things, or listen to intriguing conversations that take place in your vicinity and write them down. Don't be afraid to reconstruct the ordinary stuff that occurs every day. Have a fight with your boss? Do as my novelist friend Linda Mickey did. Kill him . . .on paper. Her furious imaginings became the plot for her first book, Greased Wheels. By the way, in every state, murder on the page is considered an acceptable alternative to punching someone's lights out. Or worse.

But let me add a caution. Writers write. They don't spin out their plot ideas at cocktail parties. In my humble opinion, talking about what you plan to write is the best way to suck all the energy from the idea and/or lose it to someone who may be suffering from writer's block. The only time to share your work is when it's reached written form and you're asking for an opinion from your significant other or a group of your fellows in a writing workshop or class.

That reminds me: by "writing," I don't mean endless polishing and re-polishing the opening page of your novel. A new writer in one of my first workshops did that and it drove the rest of us bonkers. The sad thing was...she had a wonderful, lyrical way with words. She just couldn't bring herself to move forward. I've always believed the saying, "You can't steal second if you insist on clinging to first" and it applies to writing just as it does to life. Even if you think what you've written is complete cow manure, push ahead. Finish your manuscript. THEN go back and edit the darn thing. Or throw it in a drawer to re-visit in a month. Given a little distance, you may discover it's not nearly as bad as you thought it was.

Here are two last points One comes from my Hard Earned Lessons file. Once your novel is finished, unless you've paid for a critique session, don't go to a Bigtime Writers Conference and ask your Favorite Author of All Time to read your work and provide feedback. First of all, she likely has her own manuscript to finish. Second, many publishing houses advise their authors NOT to accept reading requests from writers they don't know to avoid potential allegations of plagiarism.  My final point . . . finish your manuscript AND have it professionally edited (no, your nephew the English teacher doesn't qualify as a pro in this case...you want to be published, not graded, right?) before you start looking for an agent. The "why" comes from an agent who shall remain anonymous because she was drunker than a skunk in the bar of a New York hotel when she spoke this line, which I quote exactly: "I ‘spect to shee shit from these firsht time assh-holes and, you know what? You know what? They seldom dishappoint me."

So don't dishappoint. Write until you can write no more every chance you get.