2011: this was the year that...

I remember, at the of 2010, looking back and thinking, roughly, "meh". It had not been that much of an exciting year, following as it did almost exactly the same pattern as 2009 had, but without the added challenge of moving countries and starting a business from scratch.

I thought my assessment of 2011 might be similar, but, on reflection, realised that this year has been different, in subtle but perhaps significant ways.

This was, after all, the year I met Rob Lowe, and consequently wobbled briefly in my devotion to Bradley Whitford, because when a person is that good-looking and that charming in real life, it can tend to confuse you. I quickly recovered, though.

This was, not unrelatedly, the year that I discovered the Hay Literary Festival. Okay, my meeting with a slightly-famous-author did not turn out to be the key to fame and fortune and a lifelong literary friendship, but Hay was fun, and inspiring, and educational, and there were lots of books, and I want to go again, and again, and again.

It was, however, the year in which a literary friendship did begin: my creative-non-fiction friend Sylvia is a lof of fun and hugely inspiring. And there were other new people in my life too: people like Brian and MA - both DC friends that began online and moved closer to the realm of reality this year.

This was, returning to the subject of meeting famous people (famous to me, that is - for which read people having to do with the West Wing), also the year that I met Richard Schiff, who was reasonably nice to me when you consider that I lost all power of speech and reason and the ability to form intelligent questions like "so do you prefer stage or screen?" It was the year that I failed to meet Elisabeth Moss, though (straying briefly from the West Wing for a second) I did, as a result of attempting to meet her, get Keira Knightley's autograph. It was the year that I met Melissa Fitzgerald (who plays CJ's assistant, Carol), though I hesitate to put her in the same category since meeting her felt less like star-spotting and more like making a new friend.

It was, of course, still not the year when I met either Bradley Whitford or Janel Moloney, but I'm guessing you've worked that out, since I might have mentioned it by now if I had. A lot. Loudly. With many exclamation marks.

It was also the year when I finished my first novel (although "finished" is a relative term - I'm not sure that you ever really finish - it seems you just stop). It was the year when I started my second - Primary Season is its current working title - and I will, at some point, write a blogpost that predictably will compare this experience to having a second baby - it's not that you love your first any less, but you have less time to devote to it, and less time to devote to the second because of the first, and a tiny part of you is already thinking of the third. Anyway, I digress.

It was the year that I did my first real campaigning in America (unless you're counting the few phone calls I made trying to convince people to vote for Martha Coakley way back in January 2009). I did phone banking and door to door canvassing, and I would have done voter registration if the good people of Pasadena hadn't been scared off by the prospect of drizzle (don't get me started).

it was the year I self-published my little eBook on language learning, Conquering Babel, which has sold, oh, forty copies or so, and started blogging about language learning to build a platform in my attempt to take over the world as a language-learning guru.

It was the year, for better or worse, that I discovered Authonomy, where my first novel, Inevitable, is currently in 28th place, meaning that sometime in the first half of 2012 it should land on the desk of a Harper Collins editor, who may or may not offer me a contract, which I may or may not accept.

It was the year when I did (and loved) my first Gotham Writers' Workshop course. It was the year when I was accepted to American University to study for an MFA in Creative Writing (whether or not I end up going is anothe rmatter). It was the year that I did NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month - the challenge of a 50,000 word first draft of a novel in thirty days) for the first time. So I suppose it was a year where writing featured heavily. It has so become a part of my life that I didn't even really notice. It doesn't feel shiny and new anymore, yet I keep going, and for someone who normally moves onto something new after the excitement fades, this is a good sign.

It was the year of my first internal American flight and also my first visit to Portugal, where the coffee, let me tell you, is delicious, and tastes exactly like Spanish cafe con leche, to which my mind often turns as I sip on a Belgian coffee that I wish I could enjoy.

But, wait! This was also the year when Starbucks opened in Brussels, which has considerably reduced my homesickness and irritation at missing trains, and thus my general levels of grumpiness.

It was the year of weddings, too - four, and yes there was a funeral too, and that was incredibly sad. It was the year of the last Brighton Leaders' Conference. It was the year I started swimming again. It was the year in which one of my multiple twitter accounts gained considerable momentum, hit 5,000 followers and kept going. It was the year in which for the first time an article of mine was published in a magazine you can actually buy in WHSmith - Writers' Forum.

It was another year in which I failed to keep a diary, though, so I'm forgetting a lot, no doubt. I'd like to think that next year I will be disciplined enough to fill in a few lines a day in my five-year diary thing that I bought, full of good intentions, at the beginning of 2010. I think I actually might this time, because I am expecting great things of 2012. But that's the subject of another post, another day..

Staging Hope: Acts of Peace in Northern Uganda

I don't watch many documentaries; the ones I do tend to be about the lives of American presidents or the development of the English language. I am afraid of pain - my own, and other people's - and what I watch tends to reflect that.

I've known about Staging Hope for some time: it's a documentary made by Melissa Fitzgerald (aka Carol from the West Wing, for those who are wondering) about a drama project in Northern Uganda. I thought it was going to be full of the kind of thing that's hard to hear and even harder to watch, the kind of thing that makes me flick channels when it's on the news because it hurts to be confronted with just how evil people can be and with my own inertia in the face of that same evil.

And there was some of that, of course. That, after all, is the reason d'être of the Voices of Uganda project and of the film which sprang from it.

But Staging Hope is warm and funny, too. It's the story of an unlikely friendship between a group of Ugandan teenagers - who have known nothing except war and poverty and the kind of suffering we would happily plug our ears with cotton wool not to have to hear about - and a group of American actors whose lives, like all of ours, are incredibly privileged by any reasonable standard.

It's the story, too, of the power of drama to connect people, to instil confidence, to help people tell about the things that they need to tell and that others need to hear. And if you're sceptical - if that sounds like Hollywood mumbo jumbo to you - then I defy you to watch this film and not change your mind.

Staging Hope is also something else, something that touched me deeply as someone who hopes one day to be recognised for her art. It's the story of one woman who used her relative fame and connections not for her own gain but for advocacy on behalf of others: to raise awareness of an issue, the war in Northern Uganda, which has been called the greatest forgotten humanitarian crisis of all time.

The children in the film repeatedly asked the Americans not to forget them; Melissa and her team have not. They are in regular contact with them, and are resourcing them to keep telling their stories and teach others to do the same. They've also been instrumental in bringing about a piece of legislation that has enjoyed unparalleled bipartisan support and that hopefully will contribute to ending the war and alleviating the suffering of the kids in the movie and thousands like them.

An issue like that one can feel dry and distant - bills debated on in Washington DC to help people we don't know in a country most of us couldn't place on a map. Staging Hope restores the human angle to the debate - more than that, it places it centre stage, no pun intended - and, rather than making me want to channel flick, it made me want to do something.

Searched for recently...

... One of my all-time favourite keyword searches this week:

"Books for people who love the West Wing"

Well, there are plenty of books around along the lines of "behind the scenes of the West Wing" (frustratingly they only tend to cover the early seasons) and Amazon, in its usual helpful manner, will happily point you to them.

But no fiction. Until now.

Much as I would love to publish Donna Moss' diary and/or some quality Josh and Donna fan fiction, I think there may be some kind of copyright laws about that.

Next best thing, though: a book whose characters are fans, and occasionally quote lines, and talk about politics. And may even use the world's best chat-up line, from Scent of a Woman, "we should get together and talk politics sometime".

A book, which, in my head, has a film version in which the leads are played by Melissa Fitzgerald and (of course) Bradley Whitford, with cameos by Janel Moloney, Joshua Malina, and Allison Janney.

So look out for inevitable by Claire Lyman, coming in - maybe late 2011? In which case I really ought to get off this blog so I can wake up bright and early tomorrow (well, before 2 pm - it is Saturday after all) and ready to write the next few scenes...

Bradley Whitford makes me cry!

I've taken a big step in the last few weeks: I wouldn't exactly call it having reconciled myself to there being no more West Wing, but I'm coming to terms with the fact that if if I want to see more of Bradley Whitford, I will have to cross back from fiction into reality and remind myself that he is not only Josh Lyman. That he is, in fact, an actor, and appears in lots of other stuff. It turns out, actually, that he's in quite a lot of films, but often films available only in the US, and often not as the lead (though quite why baffles me, but that's another story).

What I didn't count on was how much he would make me cry.

And not just because I am so in love with him.

Little Manhattan was wonderful, and it's a film I would never have discovered were it not for my twitter friends (do we call them friends?) and my obsession (yes, I think we can call it an obsession) with all things West Wing, and with the beautiful Brad in particular. A film that's right up my street, and not just because the book I'm writing has as its heart not only childhood sweethearts, but also that eternal question of whether it is really better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all. I'm still not sure I have the answer, and I don't know whether my character (Kate) does either. (Oh, and the hero is called Brad and has fluffy hair and dimples, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.)

A lovely, cute film, funny, full of quotable lines, sweet moments, great acting even from children (I think Josh Hutcherson has a bit of Bradley Whitford in him, so it's fitting he played his son) and lots of New York (which I have also fallen in love with of late, along with all things American. Oh Aaron Sorkin... you have a lot to answer for.). I cried, a bit. But it was a feel-good film, and I'll be watching it again, soon.

And so the tradition was established: every weekend I go on Amazon, find a random film with Bradley Whitford in that is probably cute and harmless (so, not Cabin in the Woods) and then I order it and have it ready and waiting for when I get home from work on Fridays.

This week, in my enthusiasm, and my confusion at now having two separate Amazon accounts, I accidentally ordered two copies of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. (If anyone would like a copy at a bargainous price, let me know, though I may be about to put you off it.) A winner, I thought: in an attempt to fill the void left by the end of the West Wing, I've been working my way through Gilmore Girls, and am getting into it, though, as I'm sure I will be expounding upon in another blogpost, it's made me realise that one of the things I love most about WW is the way that romance is subtly blended into a much bigger metanarrative. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, I love Alexis Bledel and her blue eyes (I would like her to play me when I am famous please - her or Melissa Fitzgerald, since Janel Moloney is perhaps too blonde).

So, I thought - Bradley Whitford, Alexis Bledel, and a happy film on the theme of friendship. What's not to like?

Nothing's not to like. It's a great movie. (Movie? Film, I mean. Oops.) I was particularly impressed with Alexis Bledel, because she most definitely wasn't Rory - and as noted elsewhere, in a post also on a loose Bradley Whitford theme, that is one of the signs of a great actor. A lesser adolescent actress would surely have been Prototype Teenage Girl Part Two - but she holds herself different, has different mannerisms - I was ticking off all those personalisation techniques in my head.

Of course, Brad is great too. He even had me unconsciously closing my eyes when he said grace! So you see, I have trouble with the fact/fiction boundary. Which is why I was probably always destined to be a writer.

The problem is, no one told me I was going to cry. Not like oh-wow-Josh-finally-kissed-Donna or I-want-Matt-Santos-to-be-my-President slight teary eyedness, but proper bawling.

This is not my definition of a feel-good film.

I'm sure someone out there will tell me it's because I also grew up a long way from my dad, but Brad's character is nothing like him, and nor were our circumstances.

Part of me, the more I read about Brad and Jane, also feels very sad that they divorced when they seemed so in love and happy and ideally suited. But come on, I am not that altruistic. I'm sure that's not what has me crying like that.

Maybe it's because I never had the kind of friendship these girls have as teenagers, and always wanted it. But that pain feels a long way away too.

The story of each girl was touching, and I found Tibby and Bailey's the most poignant. (Well, that's what I'd like to think; actually it was Carmen and Al's, but that would be admitting that the psychologists are right about pain from childhood and the like.) My point is this: I defy you, whatever your history, not to find something in this film that you will identify with deeply on some level.

Go ahead and watch it. Especially if you're a fan of any of the actors, sunny Greece, young men who turn out not to be losers after all, and friendships that prevails over all.

Just don't say I didn't warn you about the need for tissues and Haagen Dasz.