So The Simpsons Movie was okay. Some very funny moments and gags, but ultimately not a whole lot more than an extended episode. Maybe a little less, even. It was fun, but it didn’t really fire me up to start watching the series with any regularity again.

The previews before the movie were, by and large, pretty dreadful. I’ve already mentioned how awful and ill-advised Daddy Day Camp looks, but the new Alvin & the Chipmunks movie just looks plain creepy. (The fact that the teaser prominently features Alvin swallowing his brother Theodore’s excrement* really doesn’t help.) With this and Underdog, my Jason Lee tolerance is really hitting its peak. (And they haven’t even come out yet!) I think I liked him a lot better when he was starring in Kevin Smith movies.

* No, seriously. Sorry if I spoiled anything for you.

“The worst thing a writer can do is to launch an internal editor during the writing process. Nothing could be more stifling.” Howard Junker

Ed Champion is right that there isn’t “any uniform manner to writing a novel, except to get to the end of the damn thing,” but this has definitely been my worst problem when writing: fretting over the words so much that I don’t actually write them. This may be why I find the free-writing exercises I do locally with friends — and that, once upon a time, I did here. Even when whatever I’ve written isn’t any good, there’s great satisfaction in actually getting words down on the page.

Heather may suggest this is a perfect reason to take part in the upcoming 3-Day Novel Writing Contest — to have any hope of success, you can’t help but just write — but I don’t know…