If I keep this blog writing-exclusive, it's going to be updated in weird fits and bursts. Easier to use it to track all of my hobbies and ramble here instead of Facebook so my small and distant group of friends doesn't become frustrated with my incessant stream of craft-related babble.
In that case: knitting.
If I keep knitting at this rate:
1) I will finish this blanket before it gets too hot to use it.
2) My arms will fall off.
I have yet to decide which matters more.
Still, just finished Log Cabin Square #6. So far, I have three in Noro Kureyon (all colorway 254) and three in KnitPicks Chroma (one each in colorways Pool Party, Galapagos and Pegasus). With the space for the edging, if I place the blocks three wide and two tall, it takes up about a third of my twin bed. So it would take eighteen to make a twin-sized blanket and I'm hoping to make something closer to queen sized, so I'm aiming for either 25 (5x5) or 30 (5x6) blocks total.
I've used all of my Noro on the three blocks of colorway 254. I have enough of the Chroma to make (including any blocks I've already knit) two blocks of Galapagos, two blocks of Mix Tape, two blocks of Pegasus, six blocks of Pool Party and four blocks of North Woods. That means I have enough supplies for nineteen blocks at the moment, not including the edging. So I need around five more skeins of Chroma to finish this thing, plus whatever yarn I'm using for the border (criteria: cheap, worsted weight, not acrylic, solid black). Oh hello KnitPicks clearance sale~~
In mostly unrelated news: I just learned how to make a mitered square. All I can say is "DUH." Now that I've seen one up close (albeit in video), it's absolutely obvious. I love how knitting is like that. You look at something and it's completely incomprehensible... until suddenly it's so obvious that you can't believe it was ever less than perfectly clear. One minute you're this walking tangle of knots and yarn, and the next minute you could do it in your sleep.
I am now resisting the urge to make a mitered square blanket in combination with my log cabin blanket. RESIST.
I figure this knitting craze will blow over soon after the new year gets here. I normally drop a new project by now -- I'm a little bit surprised to find that it's still holding my interest. It's been three days of relatively intense work without much incentive to continue, progress-wise.
So I decided earlier that I have around five or six more skeins of Chroma to finish up this blanket. I know I'm going to get at least one more skein of Pegasus, because I quite liked that. I'll probably get two skeins of Roller Skate because those colors are lovely and I want them and I don't need a more articulate reason than that. I like the look of Mix Tape on the skein, but I want to see how my square knits up before I commit to buying more of it -- some of the projects with it on Ravelry are kind of yucky looking. North Woods is lovely, but I already have two skeins... but let's be realistic: I like the colorway and it's on clearance. I'll probably buy more of that, too.
It is entirely possible that I'll make a second patchwork multicolor blanket using Chroma (possibly accented with Noro). I like several of the colorways that are on clearance and therefore not coming back. I should stock up on them before they go away. Especially Pegasus, North Woods and (if it looks as good knit as it does in the skein) Mix Tape.
Galapagos was disappointing. I love the way it looks on the skein and I love the colors, but there's significantly less variation than I'd prefer. It's pretty, but it's a nebulous, drifty kind of pretty. If I wanted something with that much consistency in color, I wouldn't have bought Chroma. In general, my major complaint with Chroma so far is that the colors lack complexity. They're all very vibrant individual colors -- nothing is muted and greyed out unless it's done intentionally. I kind of like the "kid put the crayons in a blender" aspect of Noro where you sometimes get terribly clashing colors stuck next to each other but in the end, it somehow ties itself together because there's so much variation that it actually starts to harmonize. That's a terribly mixed metaphor.
This post is even more rambly than usual. To anyone who has the misfortune of stumbling upon it: I apologize.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Writing and Relationships
I've noticed something: I can't write when I'm in a real relationship. I was with Alex for three years. I probably wrote less than 100k in all that time combined. I understood that it would be hard to write at first -- within that "honeymoon period" (I hate that phrase), it's reasonable to expect that some hobbies will fall through the cracks. But everyone said it would get better; it would get easier; I would return to my routines. I never expected that I was making a solid, long-term trade.
It didn't get better. It didn't get easier. But a month after we broke up, I wrote 30k in around a week, and it was all GOOD. 30k keepable, staying-in-the-draft words is probably as much as I wrote in the whole three years we were together.
I can't really offer advice, but I can certainly confirm the phenomenon.
It's similar to how I am with hobbies, except to a vastly greater extreme. I usually go through cycles with my hobbies. I'll knit obsessively for a month, then throw my knitting needles in a box for half a year. I'll read five or six books in the course of a few days, voraciously devouring the text... and then not buy another book for a month or two. I'm used to engaging the world like that. But with a relationship, it's different.
A major part of the reason I write is a combination of two factors:
1) I am a complete control freak, and
2) I crave social interaction but have difficulty finding people I want to interact with.
When those two needs are both unsatisfied, writing steps in to fill the gap. I can create a "social life" by emotionally engaging with the characters. It gives me someone to care about in a completely safe, totally predictable kind of way. I don't always know what my characters are going to do, and I don't always know who they're going to become, but ultimately, I can just press the "close window" button at the top of my screen and never touch the document again if I feel like things aren't going the way I want to. I can abandon them and reclaim them at will. I can choose how much I want to empathize with them, and I can manipulate my own emotions by manipulating my characters. Writing gives my control-freak side something productive to chew on.
When I'm in a relationship, I don't have those needs. When I'm in a relationship, one of two things happens to my control freak tendencies. Ideally, they're significantly diminished. I get much less panicky and I'm capable of being less uptight, even capricious or impulsive sometimes. Worst case scenario, I'm too busy trying to use my control-freak tendencies to force a doomed relationship to work -- there's no time for me to play around with writing when I'm trying to defibrillate a flat-lining romance. And obviously having a partner fulfills my need for social interaction within the relatively narrow classification of people that I actively choose to interact with.
Sometimes I convince myself that I'd be happiest if I spent the rest of my life alone. I enjoy relationships. I love the depth and the personal expansion and the connectedness and the things I can learn. But when I start to question it, when I ask myself which I'd rather have written on my gravestone, "beloved of ____" or "beloved author," I start to feel uncomfortable. I've had two life-changing romances, lasting nearly three years each. I've had my time to love people and to be loved in return. And I start to convince myself that maybe I've gotten my fill of society for a while; maybe I should invest my emotions in a page instead of a person.
I don't think I could possibly love a human as much as I love writing. Even having two people I would die for, in a literal, logical and non-exaggerated way, even THEN I think I'd rather have a life of books than people. And that scares me a little bit.
It didn't get better. It didn't get easier. But a month after we broke up, I wrote 30k in around a week, and it was all GOOD. 30k keepable, staying-in-the-draft words is probably as much as I wrote in the whole three years we were together.
I can't really offer advice, but I can certainly confirm the phenomenon.
It's similar to how I am with hobbies, except to a vastly greater extreme. I usually go through cycles with my hobbies. I'll knit obsessively for a month, then throw my knitting needles in a box for half a year. I'll read five or six books in the course of a few days, voraciously devouring the text... and then not buy another book for a month or two. I'm used to engaging the world like that. But with a relationship, it's different.
A major part of the reason I write is a combination of two factors:
1) I am a complete control freak, and
2) I crave social interaction but have difficulty finding people I want to interact with.
When those two needs are both unsatisfied, writing steps in to fill the gap. I can create a "social life" by emotionally engaging with the characters. It gives me someone to care about in a completely safe, totally predictable kind of way. I don't always know what my characters are going to do, and I don't always know who they're going to become, but ultimately, I can just press the "close window" button at the top of my screen and never touch the document again if I feel like things aren't going the way I want to. I can abandon them and reclaim them at will. I can choose how much I want to empathize with them, and I can manipulate my own emotions by manipulating my characters. Writing gives my control-freak side something productive to chew on.
When I'm in a relationship, I don't have those needs. When I'm in a relationship, one of two things happens to my control freak tendencies. Ideally, they're significantly diminished. I get much less panicky and I'm capable of being less uptight, even capricious or impulsive sometimes. Worst case scenario, I'm too busy trying to use my control-freak tendencies to force a doomed relationship to work -- there's no time for me to play around with writing when I'm trying to defibrillate a flat-lining romance. And obviously having a partner fulfills my need for social interaction within the relatively narrow classification of people that I actively choose to interact with.
Sometimes I convince myself that I'd be happiest if I spent the rest of my life alone. I enjoy relationships. I love the depth and the personal expansion and the connectedness and the things I can learn. But when I start to question it, when I ask myself which I'd rather have written on my gravestone, "beloved of ____" or "beloved author," I start to feel uncomfortable. I've had two life-changing romances, lasting nearly three years each. I've had my time to love people and to be loved in return. And I start to convince myself that maybe I've gotten my fill of society for a while; maybe I should invest my emotions in a page instead of a person.
I don't think I could possibly love a human as much as I love writing. Even having two people I would die for, in a literal, logical and non-exaggerated way, even THEN I think I'd rather have a life of books than people. And that scares me a little bit.
Friday, September 23, 2011
TWFSS, Day Two -- The Paper That Did Not Wish To Exist
Today marks my second full day without Facebook. Not quite there -- only 43 hours so far.
You remember how I said I didn't have time to miss Facebook yesterday?
WELL I HAVE TIME NOW.
I have a paper due at midnight tonight. I'm only somewhat familiar with the material, and I have no idea what topic I'm going to choose to write on. I can't just phone it in. For one thing, I adore this professor and I have this ridiculous desire to make him acknowledge that I'm clever (because clever is kind of like attractive and that would somehow validate my little-girl crush on him -__-"). Even if I didn't need to distinguish myself, I've taken two other classes with Mozina and he's well aware of my general writing level. If I write a shitty paper, he'll call me on it because he knows I can do better.
It's due in 6 hours. I haven't started writing yet. I haven't even finished rereading the article yet. I'm staring at the address bar of my internet browser with an almost feral hunger. Give. me. my. social. media.
Immediately.
I'm weird as far as procrastinators go. I don't procrastinate because I don't want to do the work. I'm actually interested in seeing where my brain decides to take this paper. (My essays tend to feel much more like a reading experience than a writing experience -- I rarely feel like I'm "in control" of a paper.) For me, procrastination is actually a productive element to my writing process. I have to procrastinate to the point that I'm absolutely sure that there's no way I could possibly finish on time. That makes me panic. Then I ride the panic/adrenaline-rush as a strange sort of inspiration and dive into the project with a fervor. For me, that last minute panic isn't a passive result of procrastination -- it's the whole point.
It's tactical procrastination.
And now my major procrastination sources are gone. I did most of my cleaning on Tuesday when I was studying for a Hebrew Bible exam. I could feasibly clean now, but it wouldn't make me feel productive. And I normally spam Facebook with several messages about the general state of my procrastination process and/or the various things I'd rather be doing. Then I eventually get around to actually writing the paper and I gloat about it, also on Facebook.
Now I'm worried that I'm going to miss the moment that triggers my last-minute panic and I'm NOT going to panic and then I'm ACTUALLY going to fail this paper.
Also, completely unrelated: I did Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred program for the first time today. More specifically, I did the first 15 minutes of Week One. For those keeping track at home, that's less than 1/3 of a single day's workout. I feel like my legs have been beaten with clubs. Heavy clubs. Clubs with nails on them.
The initial plan was to do the Couch to 5k running program on Mondays, Wednesdays and whatever day I have off, and then do the 30 Day Shred program on work days. In reality, if I do that, my body is apt to keel over dead from exhaustion.
So for now, I'm going to take it slow. When the weather is cool enough, I'll take Haven for a run with me on the Couch to 5k program. If the weather is either too hot or too rainy, I'll take a break for a day or do the 30 Day Shred inside. Probably the former. Let's be serious -- push-ups and crunches kick my ass. Squats? Whatthefuck is a squat? (PAINFUL, that's what.)
Still no writing. No fiction, no essay. This has to change by midnight or Professor Mozina is going to be angry with me.
Even worse! What if he's all understanding? "Just get it to me in a reasonable amount of time." aflkjasflkjsfdlksfd I couldn't handle it. I have to write this paper. It has to be amazing. It has to be finished by midnight. OR ELSE.
And on that note, I'm off to find a new method to procrastinate.
You remember how I said I didn't have time to miss Facebook yesterday?
WELL I HAVE TIME NOW.
I have a paper due at midnight tonight. I'm only somewhat familiar with the material, and I have no idea what topic I'm going to choose to write on. I can't just phone it in. For one thing, I adore this professor and I have this ridiculous desire to make him acknowledge that I'm clever (because clever is kind of like attractive and that would somehow validate my little-girl crush on him -__-"). Even if I didn't need to distinguish myself, I've taken two other classes with Mozina and he's well aware of my general writing level. If I write a shitty paper, he'll call me on it because he knows I can do better.
It's due in 6 hours. I haven't started writing yet. I haven't even finished rereading the article yet. I'm staring at the address bar of my internet browser with an almost feral hunger. Give. me. my. social. media.
Immediately.
I'm weird as far as procrastinators go. I don't procrastinate because I don't want to do the work. I'm actually interested in seeing where my brain decides to take this paper. (My essays tend to feel much more like a reading experience than a writing experience -- I rarely feel like I'm "in control" of a paper.) For me, procrastination is actually a productive element to my writing process. I have to procrastinate to the point that I'm absolutely sure that there's no way I could possibly finish on time. That makes me panic. Then I ride the panic/adrenaline-rush as a strange sort of inspiration and dive into the project with a fervor. For me, that last minute panic isn't a passive result of procrastination -- it's the whole point.
It's tactical procrastination.
And now my major procrastination sources are gone. I did most of my cleaning on Tuesday when I was studying for a Hebrew Bible exam. I could feasibly clean now, but it wouldn't make me feel productive. And I normally spam Facebook with several messages about the general state of my procrastination process and/or the various things I'd rather be doing. Then I eventually get around to actually writing the paper and I gloat about it, also on Facebook.
Now I'm worried that I'm going to miss the moment that triggers my last-minute panic and I'm NOT going to panic and then I'm ACTUALLY going to fail this paper.
Also, completely unrelated: I did Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred program for the first time today. More specifically, I did the first 15 minutes of Week One. For those keeping track at home, that's less than 1/3 of a single day's workout. I feel like my legs have been beaten with clubs. Heavy clubs. Clubs with nails on them.
The initial plan was to do the Couch to 5k running program on Mondays, Wednesdays and whatever day I have off, and then do the 30 Day Shred program on work days. In reality, if I do that, my body is apt to keel over dead from exhaustion.
So for now, I'm going to take it slow. When the weather is cool enough, I'll take Haven for a run with me on the Couch to 5k program. If the weather is either too hot or too rainy, I'll take a break for a day or do the 30 Day Shred inside. Probably the former. Let's be serious -- push-ups and crunches kick my ass. Squats? Whatthefuck is a squat? (PAINFUL, that's what.)
Still no writing. No fiction, no essay. This has to change by midnight or Professor Mozina is going to be angry with me.
Even worse! What if he's all understanding? "Just get it to me in a reasonable amount of time." aflkjasflkjsfdlksfd I couldn't handle it. I have to write this paper. It has to be amazing. It has to be finished by midnight. OR ELSE.
And on that note, I'm off to find a new method to procrastinate.
TWFSS, Day One in Retrospect
Yesterday, I was too busy to notice that I'd disabled Facebook. On the flip side, I was also too busy to write.
My morning started at 5:00am, which is not the hallmark of a good morning. I work at a dog daycare, which is fantastic. I love the work, I love (most of) the dogs, I really respect my boss and coworkers. All around, it's a great place.
But.
It opens for customers at 7:00am.
Which means the staff has to be there at 6:30 to feed and care for the boarding dogs.
And it's around 45 minutes away from my house.
So. Morning shift = waking up at 5:00am. That's fine. I'm actually starting to get used to it. My body has been waking up at 4:55 for the past two weeks in anticipation of my alarm going off -- that's a good sign, right? But there's something that feels viscerally wrong about waking up before the sun has even thought about kissing the horizon. Going to bed then, sure. But waking up? What am I, a fucking rooster? I am NOT. We civilized folk are very firm in our disbelief in the hours between 4am and 10am. No self-respecting college student has ever seen them. We believe them to be mythological.
So I hauled my sorry ass out of bed, more sorry than usual because of the hour. Showered, fed the pups, got them both ready to go to work with me (reason #97 why my job is better than yours). Normal morning.
There was construction on I-85, and I remembered the godawful traffic jam from the previous Thursday morning. Thinking myself quite clever, I took the alternate route through town. I even remembered to leave early so I'd have time for stop-lights. I was responsible. It was a novel feeling.
I worked with Stephanie yesterday. Steph's pleasant to work with -- socially, she's much closer to my level than most of the other employees. (Except I'm about a thousand times more awkward, but that's just how I roll.) We got the dogs fed very quickly and everyone was playing politely. Nice morning.
Time passed. I started to feel uneasy. Shouldn't the daycare dogs be here by now? After a few more minutes, I voiced this concern to Stephanie. She was likewise confused. She went up to the front desk to see who was running the check-in portion of the business while we were taking care of the dogs.
No one.
And that was when my whole mind started shouting "OH SHIT."
It's not just a little fuck-up, dear reader. I checked the clock -- it was 8:00am. Our doors are supposed to open at 7. Roughly 90% of our customers for the day arrive between 7:30 and 8:00. At the absolute minimum, we lost $150 in daycare sales that day.
And then there's boarding. At least two customers were scheduled to start boarding stays yesterday that never arrived -- I can only assume that they tried to drop off during the hour when Stephanie and I thought someone else was running the front desk. So there goes another $40 per dog, per day.
And as the shit topping on the shit cake, it means our customers had their dogs in the car with them on the way to work. Were half a dozen people late to work because they had to drive their pampered pooches back home? Did Camp Bow Wow get a sudden business boost down the road? Did people spontaneously celebrate Bring Your Dog To Work Day? All I know is that we royally fucked up.
And as soon as I realized this, Nicole the store owner's face appeared in the door window, looking frantic. "Why are you both down here? Why is no one up at the front desk?"
"Because I've never worked the front desk before and I didn't know I was supposed to." Even though it was true, it sounded so lame, even to me.
"It's 8:00. Weren't you curious when none of the daycare dogs came in?"
I swallowed. "It was storming. I thought they might have.. left... their dogs at home..."
To make matters worse, Nicole had texted me and Stephanie while we were working in the room. Mind you, I don't have a texting plan on my phone. It charges me a ridiculous amount of money per opened text, and everyone in my life knows not to text me.
Except Nicole.
Like good employees, Stephanie and I both had our phones off in the dog playroom. Neither of us received the texts that said one of us should run the front desk while the other worked with the dogs.
It was pretty much fail in all directions. I guess that's what I'm saying.
I'm panicky about being reprimanded. Even a mild scolding, if I feel like I deserve it, is enough to completely shatter my sense of confidence for several days. I could feel my body locking up when Nicole was talking to us. I like Nicole. She's a fantastic store owner. Barring this one incident, I've never seen her get angry with someone. She's very level-headed and rational, which is an amazing trait to find in someone in a management position. I work harder for Nicole than I've worked for any of my previous jobs because I don't want to disappoint her -- she sets a very high standard. So historically, I had no reason to be terrified of her. But I was. I wasn't QUITE at the stage that I would call a full-blown anxiety attack, but my whole body was slowly going rigid and I couldn't meet her eyes. A few minutes longer and it would have escalated into an anxiety attack. Thankfully, the scolding was brief, and she walked out of the room before I had to (which was important because, as mentioned, my muscles lock up when I'm afraid and I was having difficulty walking with any semblance of dignity).
I spent the rest of the day cringing and ultra-submitting any time anyone so much as looked at me.
Got home and went to sleep at 4pm in an attempt to unwind. Dreamed that I was late to work and got fired. Woke up and saw that my alarm clock said "10:30." Panicked. Panicked so hard. Then I realized that the light in my room was coming from my lamp, not the window. 10:30 PM. I resumed breathing.
I was only awake and at home for 3 hours yesterday, between 10:30pm and 1:30am. The desire to check Facebook wasn't particularly strong. Nor was the desire to write, though -- too emotionally drained. My plan was to sleep until I didn't care any more.
Instead, I just ended up sleeping until this morning's alarm clock went off. Woke up at 5am. Got to work by 6:30am. Didn't fuck up today. I guess that's good.
Nicole's still mad at me. I can feel it. I don't blame her, either. I'd be livid. What if I lost her a regular customer? What if someone was so disgusted by that customer service that they decided to never come back? Because I was stupid. Because I didn't question the fact that none of the daycare dogs had arrived at the time they usually come in.
And now I'm just angsting. That's what I'm here for, I guess. I'm going to open Scrivener in an hour or two. I want to have most of TEP outlined closely by the end of the week.
I'm glad I just wrote that sentence. It reminded me that I have a paper due in 5 hours and I have absolutely no idea what I'm writing about (and it's for my most demanding professor, whom I adore).
Can it just be November already?
My morning started at 5:00am, which is not the hallmark of a good morning. I work at a dog daycare, which is fantastic. I love the work, I love (most of) the dogs, I really respect my boss and coworkers. All around, it's a great place.
But.
It opens for customers at 7:00am.
Which means the staff has to be there at 6:30 to feed and care for the boarding dogs.
And it's around 45 minutes away from my house.
So. Morning shift = waking up at 5:00am. That's fine. I'm actually starting to get used to it. My body has been waking up at 4:55 for the past two weeks in anticipation of my alarm going off -- that's a good sign, right? But there's something that feels viscerally wrong about waking up before the sun has even thought about kissing the horizon. Going to bed then, sure. But waking up? What am I, a fucking rooster? I am NOT. We civilized folk are very firm in our disbelief in the hours between 4am and 10am. No self-respecting college student has ever seen them. We believe them to be mythological.
So I hauled my sorry ass out of bed, more sorry than usual because of the hour. Showered, fed the pups, got them both ready to go to work with me (reason #97 why my job is better than yours). Normal morning.
There was construction on I-85, and I remembered the godawful traffic jam from the previous Thursday morning. Thinking myself quite clever, I took the alternate route through town. I even remembered to leave early so I'd have time for stop-lights. I was responsible. It was a novel feeling.
I worked with Stephanie yesterday. Steph's pleasant to work with -- socially, she's much closer to my level than most of the other employees. (Except I'm about a thousand times more awkward, but that's just how I roll.) We got the dogs fed very quickly and everyone was playing politely. Nice morning.
Time passed. I started to feel uneasy. Shouldn't the daycare dogs be here by now? After a few more minutes, I voiced this concern to Stephanie. She was likewise confused. She went up to the front desk to see who was running the check-in portion of the business while we were taking care of the dogs.
No one.
And that was when my whole mind started shouting "OH SHIT."
It's not just a little fuck-up, dear reader. I checked the clock -- it was 8:00am. Our doors are supposed to open at 7. Roughly 90% of our customers for the day arrive between 7:30 and 8:00. At the absolute minimum, we lost $150 in daycare sales that day.
And then there's boarding. At least two customers were scheduled to start boarding stays yesterday that never arrived -- I can only assume that they tried to drop off during the hour when Stephanie and I thought someone else was running the front desk. So there goes another $40 per dog, per day.
And as the shit topping on the shit cake, it means our customers had their dogs in the car with them on the way to work. Were half a dozen people late to work because they had to drive their pampered pooches back home? Did Camp Bow Wow get a sudden business boost down the road? Did people spontaneously celebrate Bring Your Dog To Work Day? All I know is that we royally fucked up.
And as soon as I realized this, Nicole the store owner's face appeared in the door window, looking frantic. "Why are you both down here? Why is no one up at the front desk?"
"Because I've never worked the front desk before and I didn't know I was supposed to." Even though it was true, it sounded so lame, even to me.
"It's 8:00. Weren't you curious when none of the daycare dogs came in?"
I swallowed. "It was storming. I thought they might have.. left... their dogs at home..."
To make matters worse, Nicole had texted me and Stephanie while we were working in the room. Mind you, I don't have a texting plan on my phone. It charges me a ridiculous amount of money per opened text, and everyone in my life knows not to text me.
Except Nicole.
Like good employees, Stephanie and I both had our phones off in the dog playroom. Neither of us received the texts that said one of us should run the front desk while the other worked with the dogs.
It was pretty much fail in all directions. I guess that's what I'm saying.
I'm panicky about being reprimanded. Even a mild scolding, if I feel like I deserve it, is enough to completely shatter my sense of confidence for several days. I could feel my body locking up when Nicole was talking to us. I like Nicole. She's a fantastic store owner. Barring this one incident, I've never seen her get angry with someone. She's very level-headed and rational, which is an amazing trait to find in someone in a management position. I work harder for Nicole than I've worked for any of my previous jobs because I don't want to disappoint her -- she sets a very high standard. So historically, I had no reason to be terrified of her. But I was. I wasn't QUITE at the stage that I would call a full-blown anxiety attack, but my whole body was slowly going rigid and I couldn't meet her eyes. A few minutes longer and it would have escalated into an anxiety attack. Thankfully, the scolding was brief, and she walked out of the room before I had to (which was important because, as mentioned, my muscles lock up when I'm afraid and I was having difficulty walking with any semblance of dignity).
I spent the rest of the day cringing and ultra-submitting any time anyone so much as looked at me.
Got home and went to sleep at 4pm in an attempt to unwind. Dreamed that I was late to work and got fired. Woke up and saw that my alarm clock said "10:30." Panicked. Panicked so hard. Then I realized that the light in my room was coming from my lamp, not the window. 10:30 PM. I resumed breathing.
I was only awake and at home for 3 hours yesterday, between 10:30pm and 1:30am. The desire to check Facebook wasn't particularly strong. Nor was the desire to write, though -- too emotionally drained. My plan was to sleep until I didn't care any more.
Instead, I just ended up sleeping until this morning's alarm clock went off. Woke up at 5am. Got to work by 6:30am. Didn't fuck up today. I guess that's good.
Nicole's still mad at me. I can feel it. I don't blame her, either. I'd be livid. What if I lost her a regular customer? What if someone was so disgusted by that customer service that they decided to never come back? Because I was stupid. Because I didn't question the fact that none of the daycare dogs had arrived at the time they usually come in.
And now I'm just angsting. That's what I'm here for, I guess. I'm going to open Scrivener in an hour or two. I want to have most of TEP outlined closely by the end of the week.
I'm glad I just wrote that sentence. It reminded me that I have a paper due in 5 hours and I have absolutely no idea what I'm writing about (and it's for my most demanding professor, whom I adore).
Can it just be November already?
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The Week Facebook Stood Still (TWFSS)
This afternoon, I updated my Facebook status approximately once every hour during the time that I was (a) conscious and (b) at home.
That's so incredibly sad.
I didn't leave my computer. I wasn't doing anything. I was just spewing my thoughts to the whole wide world, rather like what I'm doing at the moment. They weren't silly thoughts, for the most part, but they were passive. It made me realize exactly how much of my life has been eclipsed by social media. I didn't like the feeling.
Several days ago, I realized something. My writing productivity plummeted in 2007. I know this. Previously, I had blamed the decline on college. I was in South Carolina. I had a social life to maintain. I didn't have time to putter around in my own head like I'd done in high school when I was a complete outcast (and relatively happy that way). But for the past year, I've been back in North Carolina. I have no social life here. Whatsoever. If I'm lucky, I leave my house once a week for something that isn't work or school related. Usually it's even less often than that. To say "I don't get out much" is a ridiculous understatement. This is pretty much where I was in high school, or as close as I can simulate while still (a) keeping my job and (b) living with my dogs.
So it wasn't college. What else changed in 2007?
I joined Facebook.
And I started to wonder -- is that where all my words went? Have I started stalking Facebook feeds instead of fantasy worlds? It seems more than probable.
So for the next week, I've disabled my ability to access Facebook. I posted a message to say that I'd be away, and I set StayFocusd (an anti-procrastination app for Chrome) to block Facebook for the next 168 hours.
I don't have a wordcount goal for how much I'd like to accomplish in my internet sabbatical. This is more of an experiment than an attempt to spur myself to some creative goal. It's not that I want to complete X by the time I enable Facebook again, but rather, that I want to see what will have been completed when StayFocusd gives me my social media fix again at 10:30pm next Wednesday.
It's been an hour. Not even. In that time, I've written this blog post and around 1,000 words on my outline for The Empty People. I'm trying to write a detailed, blow-by-blow outline of TEP in freewriting style. It's not about eloquence, but I want to be able to see the whole story from beginning to end in one concrete place. I think that could be easily divided into the phases I was aiming for earlier, and those will comfortably help me finish this beast. I'm feeling Yosseval again. Finn still needs to be more human. You can't have an antagonist who reads like an irresponsible frat boy. Or at least, that doesn't suit this properly.
That's a really good analogy for Finn, though. Finn and Sodaine -- the irresponsible frat boys who are going to be running the kingdom in ten years.
The NaNo urge is flaring up again. I blame the weather. Every time the air starts to get a little crisp, every time that brief kiss of autumn dances closer, my fingers itch for the keyboard and my mind turns toward fiction. It's remarkably predictable. You could set your calendar by it. The NaNo countdown today said 40 days remaining. Cue annual late-September panic. So I'm going to try to bash my way through to the end of plotting The Empty People by writing this freewriting outline. I'd like to be done by the time October starts. Then I want to start establishing some serious writer habits. Not the "I'll write when I have time" bullshit that I normally spout, but a real schedule. I'd like to write at least a thousand words a day in October, then move up to NaNo quota once November starts. That seems very reasonable.
I read the blog of an author the other day. Judging by what I gleaned from her blog writing, she's mediocre at best. That's fine -- mediocre and published is still better than me. I looked at the wordcounts she was pulling in, and it seemed silly, almost. Less than a thousand words a day, most of the time. But she's published. She took the slow-and-steady path, and damned if she didn't win the race. So I tell myself that this year, I'm not necessarily going to be slow, but I want to try to learn how to be steady.
I didn't think the Facebook urge would strike as quickly as it did. 200 words into my summary of TEP, I could feel my alt+tab fingers getting trigger-happy. What would I tell Facebook about the paragraph I just wrote? Did they need to know that I was starting to outline the whole novel? I stopped myself from minimizing the window at least twenty times in that thousand words. Once every fifty words. Using average sentences, that's around once every paragraph.
My god, I'm pathetic.
I'm allowed to have this blog, which I fully expect no one will read. It's here for Posterity And Things, not for mere mortals. Or something pretentious like that. I'm allowed to use Skype. I'm allowed to do pretty much anything, actually, except access Facebook. And I'm going to try to avoid getting my media fix via forums, because I hadn't been doing that before this experiment started. I don't want to jump from one manifestation to another -- I want to see what happens when I quit social media cold turkey for seven days.
NOW it has been a full hour. Total words written: 1787. 100 words above NaNo quota in an hour. The first hour. JUST the first hour.
I have no idea what my emotions are going to be like at the end of this week. Will I be frantic to get back to my social media, to throw myself back into the fold? Will I feel relieved, vindicated, victorious to have completed some massive RL undertaking while my Facebook feed was idle? Will I even want to go back?
What if I don't want to go back? What if, after a week without Facebook, I don't want to use social media anymore? None of my friends live near me. My social anxiety is particularly picky about phones. How would I comfortably keep up with the people in my life if I didn't have Facebook?
I wouldn't.
"And would that be such a bad thing?" the quiet little voice asks. "In normal circumstances, you would have parted ways by now. You've been without them in the real sense for at least a year now. Why hold on? Why cling to the illusion?"
I'm not entirely certain I like that train of thought. Also, I have to wake up at 5:00am to get to work on time tomorrow, and I'm trying to limit my caffeine intake. It's 11:30. It'll be midnight at least before I'm able to get to sleep. Resting would probably be wise.
Standing on the precipice of this, I can't decide if I'm excited or dreading it. Either way, I expect to learn something about myself, and that's what life is about, right?
I expect you'll be seeing a lot more of me this week.
That's so incredibly sad.
I didn't leave my computer. I wasn't doing anything. I was just spewing my thoughts to the whole wide world, rather like what I'm doing at the moment. They weren't silly thoughts, for the most part, but they were passive. It made me realize exactly how much of my life has been eclipsed by social media. I didn't like the feeling.
Several days ago, I realized something. My writing productivity plummeted in 2007. I know this. Previously, I had blamed the decline on college. I was in South Carolina. I had a social life to maintain. I didn't have time to putter around in my own head like I'd done in high school when I was a complete outcast (and relatively happy that way). But for the past year, I've been back in North Carolina. I have no social life here. Whatsoever. If I'm lucky, I leave my house once a week for something that isn't work or school related. Usually it's even less often than that. To say "I don't get out much" is a ridiculous understatement. This is pretty much where I was in high school, or as close as I can simulate while still (a) keeping my job and (b) living with my dogs.
So it wasn't college. What else changed in 2007?
I joined Facebook.
And I started to wonder -- is that where all my words went? Have I started stalking Facebook feeds instead of fantasy worlds? It seems more than probable.
So for the next week, I've disabled my ability to access Facebook. I posted a message to say that I'd be away, and I set StayFocusd (an anti-procrastination app for Chrome) to block Facebook for the next 168 hours.
I don't have a wordcount goal for how much I'd like to accomplish in my internet sabbatical. This is more of an experiment than an attempt to spur myself to some creative goal. It's not that I want to complete X by the time I enable Facebook again, but rather, that I want to see what will have been completed when StayFocusd gives me my social media fix again at 10:30pm next Wednesday.
It's been an hour. Not even. In that time, I've written this blog post and around 1,000 words on my outline for The Empty People. I'm trying to write a detailed, blow-by-blow outline of TEP in freewriting style. It's not about eloquence, but I want to be able to see the whole story from beginning to end in one concrete place. I think that could be easily divided into the phases I was aiming for earlier, and those will comfortably help me finish this beast. I'm feeling Yosseval again. Finn still needs to be more human. You can't have an antagonist who reads like an irresponsible frat boy. Or at least, that doesn't suit this properly.
That's a really good analogy for Finn, though. Finn and Sodaine -- the irresponsible frat boys who are going to be running the kingdom in ten years.
The NaNo urge is flaring up again. I blame the weather. Every time the air starts to get a little crisp, every time that brief kiss of autumn dances closer, my fingers itch for the keyboard and my mind turns toward fiction. It's remarkably predictable. You could set your calendar by it. The NaNo countdown today said 40 days remaining. Cue annual late-September panic. So I'm going to try to bash my way through to the end of plotting The Empty People by writing this freewriting outline. I'd like to be done by the time October starts. Then I want to start establishing some serious writer habits. Not the "I'll write when I have time" bullshit that I normally spout, but a real schedule. I'd like to write at least a thousand words a day in October, then move up to NaNo quota once November starts. That seems very reasonable.
I read the blog of an author the other day. Judging by what I gleaned from her blog writing, she's mediocre at best. That's fine -- mediocre and published is still better than me. I looked at the wordcounts she was pulling in, and it seemed silly, almost. Less than a thousand words a day, most of the time. But she's published. She took the slow-and-steady path, and damned if she didn't win the race. So I tell myself that this year, I'm not necessarily going to be slow, but I want to try to learn how to be steady.
I didn't think the Facebook urge would strike as quickly as it did. 200 words into my summary of TEP, I could feel my alt+tab fingers getting trigger-happy. What would I tell Facebook about the paragraph I just wrote? Did they need to know that I was starting to outline the whole novel? I stopped myself from minimizing the window at least twenty times in that thousand words. Once every fifty words. Using average sentences, that's around once every paragraph.
My god, I'm pathetic.
I'm allowed to have this blog, which I fully expect no one will read. It's here for Posterity And Things, not for mere mortals. Or something pretentious like that. I'm allowed to use Skype. I'm allowed to do pretty much anything, actually, except access Facebook. And I'm going to try to avoid getting my media fix via forums, because I hadn't been doing that before this experiment started. I don't want to jump from one manifestation to another -- I want to see what happens when I quit social media cold turkey for seven days.
NOW it has been a full hour. Total words written: 1787. 100 words above NaNo quota in an hour. The first hour. JUST the first hour.
I have no idea what my emotions are going to be like at the end of this week. Will I be frantic to get back to my social media, to throw myself back into the fold? Will I feel relieved, vindicated, victorious to have completed some massive RL undertaking while my Facebook feed was idle? Will I even want to go back?
What if I don't want to go back? What if, after a week without Facebook, I don't want to use social media anymore? None of my friends live near me. My social anxiety is particularly picky about phones. How would I comfortably keep up with the people in my life if I didn't have Facebook?
I wouldn't.
"And would that be such a bad thing?" the quiet little voice asks. "In normal circumstances, you would have parted ways by now. You've been without them in the real sense for at least a year now. Why hold on? Why cling to the illusion?"
I'm not entirely certain I like that train of thought. Also, I have to wake up at 5:00am to get to work on time tomorrow, and I'm trying to limit my caffeine intake. It's 11:30. It'll be midnight at least before I'm able to get to sleep. Resting would probably be wise.
Standing on the precipice of this, I can't decide if I'm excited or dreading it. Either way, I expect to learn something about myself, and that's what life is about, right?
I expect you'll be seeing a lot more of me this week.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Cleanliness = Godliness, and gods have something to do with inspiration, right?
It's the fourth day of Camp NaNo, and I'm lagging behind. This is unusual for me -- I typically have a very strong first week with dwindling word counts during the second and third. I'm at 4,109 right now. Since I'm following regular NaNo quota instead of the smaller Camp quota, I'm supposed to be at 6,668 by midnight tonight. Around 2.5k by midnight isn't much at all, really. Writing on my old schedule, that's an hour and fifteen minutes. Writing on my new schedule, I have no idea. I haven't been using my alarm clock system this year. I'm doing okay without it, so I don't see the need to start enforcing miniature word-wars until I start floundering.
My parents are still out of town, which means I have another hour or two to get things cleaned before they come home. I can't stand to clean when they're watching me, but I really do want to tidy up the house. I'm a slob, and it's making me uncomfortable, which means they probably feel like we're living in squalor.
I love the word "squalor." Never get to use that one.
I want to get my room clean tonight. Not just tidy, but clean. I want to have the whole thing looking nice by 7pm to give me some time to focus on writing in my newly cleaned, newly rearranged room.
Goals:
Finish laundry. Looks like it'll be around 5 loads to get everything done. Then half of that is going into storage, because I'm a failure and I never remembered to put away my winter clothes. Assuming I can continue to stick to my diet, I should never need to wear last year's winter clothes again, but I'm not going to donate them just yet. There's still time for me to have a willpower meltdown.
Clean the desk. It's filthy, as usual. I neither need nor want half of the things that are crammed onto those shelves. Ferret ear mite medicine? The ferrets moved in with Dillon and Pat in August. Why did I keep that?
Clean the notebook drawer in the desk. That could be used for useful things. Instead, it's been home to several dozen notebooks from middle school for the past decade. I don't know why. I try not to throw away my notebooks (they have doodles and journal entries in them, because srsly, who actually takes notes during class?), but I don't even remember putting these in here. Also, I have a perfectly good box full of the other notebooks from my school years, and they really ought to be reunited.
Rearrange the bookshelf. This requires me to make a donation box for the several-dozen books that I will never read again. Also, I need to finally unpack that box of books in the basement. I'm pretty sure it has some of my writing books in it. I've been meaning to reread No Plot? No Problem! and Sometimes The Magic Works for Camp.
Get the room clean enough to vacuum. This is so much more difficult than it sounds. It also involves picking nails out of the carpet, because the kit for my bee hive had a lot of extra nails and those somehow got scattered across my floor at some point. Vacuums don't like nails.
Move bed under air conditioning vent. My room is always hotter than the rest of the house by at least five degrees. I want to minimize that as much as possible.
Bring the big-comfy-white-chair from the basement. This chair was made for writing. It would be even better if my laptop keyboard actually worked so I didn't have to hold an external keyboard to type, though.
Remove empty bags of dog food. Yes, the bags are very strong and will carry heavy things. This is no longer justification to keep them.
Move yarn collection into the closet, where the bee hive was. It doesn't need to take up floor space.
Figure out where the exercise bike should live. The answer is not "the middle of the room." Maybe take it down to the living room, so I can bike and watch TV?
Get rid of dresser. I don't care if it's an antique. I don't care that it was mom's when she was a little girl. I don't use it. It's huge, it's heavy and it takes up too much of my room.
That should take me several hours to complete. On the positive side, this gives me an excuse to listen to my music at very loud volumes. Also, my room will be clean, which should make me much more likely to be able to write in here. Writing is easier in clean places.
The Empty People is moving along at a decent speed. I'm not keeping up with NaNo quota right now, but the plot itself isn't lagging. I think making the outline was really useful -- it let me see the big picture before diving in. I still need to fiddle with that. It's not done yet.
My friend Emily is approaching 20k right now. Words do not explain my jealousy. After I get this room cleaned, I'm going to curl up with my laptop and try to get some serious words written. This will, of course, require me to blast italktosnakes's NaNoWriMo Song at ear-splitting volumes. For motivation. I'm sure you understand.
The house is out of kettle corn. Which begs the question: since when do I eat kettle corn?
Answer: last week, apparently. Because that box was full, and now it's empty.
Had to resist the urge to start knitting today. My partially-completed Lizard Ridge blanket was making sad faces at me. Right now, I'm trying to minimize distractions in my life. I'm only able to be emotionally invested in one or two things at a time. Right now, I have my novel and my dogs. That's probably already more than I can handle. Adding in my knitting would break it. Hell, just cleaning the house is threatening to break it, but it needs to get done.
Enough babbling. Cleaning my room, then writing 2.5k+ words on TEP before bed.
My parents are still out of town, which means I have another hour or two to get things cleaned before they come home. I can't stand to clean when they're watching me, but I really do want to tidy up the house. I'm a slob, and it's making me uncomfortable, which means they probably feel like we're living in squalor.
I love the word "squalor." Never get to use that one.
I want to get my room clean tonight. Not just tidy, but clean. I want to have the whole thing looking nice by 7pm to give me some time to focus on writing in my newly cleaned, newly rearranged room.
Goals:
That should take me several hours to complete. On the positive side, this gives me an excuse to listen to my music at very loud volumes. Also, my room will be clean, which should make me much more likely to be able to write in here. Writing is easier in clean places.
The Empty People is moving along at a decent speed. I'm not keeping up with NaNo quota right now, but the plot itself isn't lagging. I think making the outline was really useful -- it let me see the big picture before diving in. I still need to fiddle with that. It's not done yet.
My friend Emily is approaching 20k right now. Words do not explain my jealousy. After I get this room cleaned, I'm going to curl up with my laptop and try to get some serious words written. This will, of course, require me to blast italktosnakes's NaNoWriMo Song at ear-splitting volumes. For motivation. I'm sure you understand.
The house is out of kettle corn. Which begs the question: since when do I eat kettle corn?
Answer: last week, apparently. Because that box was full, and now it's empty.
Had to resist the urge to start knitting today. My partially-completed Lizard Ridge blanket was making sad faces at me. Right now, I'm trying to minimize distractions in my life. I'm only able to be emotionally invested in one or two things at a time. Right now, I have my novel and my dogs. That's probably already more than I can handle. Adding in my knitting would break it. Hell, just cleaning the house is threatening to break it, but it needs to get done.
Enough babbling. Cleaning my room, then writing 2.5k+ words on TEP before bed.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Off to a Decent Start
The first season of Camp NaNo officially began yesterday.
And I totally forgot to sleep in my "camp site" in the spare bathroom. Fail.
I did, however, manage to write 1,759 words. This only required 2 phases, which may prove problematic. Those phases were meant to be ~500 words apiece. They're nearly double that. Granted, I'll likely cut out the majority of the conversation with Ineroh in the first scene, but it still leaves me over my projected length. Going to have to fiddle with that at some point.
I officially hate Finn. He has said all of four lines so far, and I can't wait to kill him. (Wait, that wasn't part of the outline? You mean Finn is the only character who gets a relatively happy ending? This is not okay). Fortunately, he's only on-camera for the first quarter of the plot. Unfortunately, I have to write two huge scenes with just him and Yosseval.
What happened to my introspective first person? It DIED, that's what. The journals and character interviews from last month were so deliciously human and real and solid. This, on the other hand, reads like a script treatment or an expanded synopsis -- all tell, no show. Doesn't matter now. I'll beat it into submission during the rewrite.
I need to work on the ages of the characters. It's becoming problematic. I know Yosseval is the youngest of the cousins. I know he's somewhere between 18 and 24. I know Ineroh and Finn are approximately the same age as Yosseval. But that means that unless the second-generation royalty all got knocked up very rapidly in the same 5-year period, most of the cousins ought to be married off and living their own lives by now. I had planned to have them piling up in the capital city, but that doesn't make sense. I know Ineroh is getting old for marriage (for a woman), which means Finn and Yosseval should be approaching the average age. Since all the other cousins are older than F/I/Y, the girls at the very least should all be married. Which contradicts what I said about Palle in the second scene. More to fix later.
In completely unrelated news: BEES.
I'm getting my first hive of bees tonight, courtesy of my friend's father. I know I'm going to name the hive after one of the canon Weyrs ([/nerd]), but I'm not sure which one. It makes the most sense to name it Fort, since Fort Weyr was established first, but the name sounds so boring. "Have to go check the honey storage in Fort." No. That sounds boring. Benden would be my next inclination -- it's the most popular one from the books, and I do like the name. But I hate virtually all of the characters in Benden (except F'nor, but F'nor is the exception to all rules). Part of me wants to name it Telgar (my favorite of the names on an aesthetic level) and part wants me to name it Igen as a nod toward StarStones. I need to decide before this evening.
Less nerdy people don't have this problem.
Since a nuc of bees costs approximately $60-$100 and Chris is giving it to me for free, I wanted to repay him with something. I can't stand it when people give me gifts that I can't repay. So I'm going to bring him four of the baby butterfly koi from the pond. I wonder how difficult it will be to catch them?
Hah. Perspective: I'm going to be driving home with a car full of bees in six hours, and I'm worried about the difficulty of catching fish in a pond.
I should be writing. Instead, I'm fantasizing about bees.
I think there may be something wrong with me.
For Camp, I think I'm going to try to do this the slow-and-steady-wins-the-race way. I've never done that before. I usually write a HUGE chunk on the first day or two, then splutter to a stop, then slam down another 10k, then stop, then 5k, then stop, etc. I'm trying to teach myself moderation, though. So let's see how long I can continue writing 1,667+ words per day. I'm guessing less than a week, knowing myself.
And I totally forgot to sleep in my "camp site" in the spare bathroom. Fail.
I did, however, manage to write 1,759 words. This only required 2 phases, which may prove problematic. Those phases were meant to be ~500 words apiece. They're nearly double that. Granted, I'll likely cut out the majority of the conversation with Ineroh in the first scene, but it still leaves me over my projected length. Going to have to fiddle with that at some point.
I officially hate Finn. He has said all of four lines so far, and I can't wait to kill him. (Wait, that wasn't part of the outline? You mean Finn is the only character who gets a relatively happy ending? This is not okay). Fortunately, he's only on-camera for the first quarter of the plot. Unfortunately, I have to write two huge scenes with just him and Yosseval.
What happened to my introspective first person? It DIED, that's what. The journals and character interviews from last month were so deliciously human and real and solid. This, on the other hand, reads like a script treatment or an expanded synopsis -- all tell, no show. Doesn't matter now. I'll beat it into submission during the rewrite.
I need to work on the ages of the characters. It's becoming problematic. I know Yosseval is the youngest of the cousins. I know he's somewhere between 18 and 24. I know Ineroh and Finn are approximately the same age as Yosseval. But that means that unless the second-generation royalty all got knocked up very rapidly in the same 5-year period, most of the cousins ought to be married off and living their own lives by now. I had planned to have them piling up in the capital city, but that doesn't make sense. I know Ineroh is getting old for marriage (for a woman), which means Finn and Yosseval should be approaching the average age. Since all the other cousins are older than F/I/Y, the girls at the very least should all be married. Which contradicts what I said about Palle in the second scene. More to fix later.
In completely unrelated news: BEES.
I'm getting my first hive of bees tonight, courtesy of my friend's father. I know I'm going to name the hive after one of the canon Weyrs ([/nerd]), but I'm not sure which one. It makes the most sense to name it Fort, since Fort Weyr was established first, but the name sounds so boring. "Have to go check the honey storage in Fort." No. That sounds boring. Benden would be my next inclination -- it's the most popular one from the books, and I do like the name. But I hate virtually all of the characters in Benden (except F'nor, but F'nor is the exception to all rules). Part of me wants to name it Telgar (my favorite of the names on an aesthetic level) and part wants me to name it Igen as a nod toward StarStones. I need to decide before this evening.
Less nerdy people don't have this problem.
Since a nuc of bees costs approximately $60-$100 and Chris is giving it to me for free, I wanted to repay him with something. I can't stand it when people give me gifts that I can't repay. So I'm going to bring him four of the baby butterfly koi from the pond. I wonder how difficult it will be to catch them?
Hah. Perspective: I'm going to be driving home with a car full of bees in six hours, and I'm worried about the difficulty of catching fish in a pond.
I should be writing. Instead, I'm fantasizing about bees.
I think there may be something wrong with me.
For Camp, I think I'm going to try to do this the slow-and-steady-wins-the-race way. I've never done that before. I usually write a HUGE chunk on the first day or two, then splutter to a stop, then slam down another 10k, then stop, then 5k, then stop, etc. I'm trying to teach myself moderation, though. So let's see how long I can continue writing 1,667+ words per day. I'm guessing less than a week, knowing myself.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Bored
Bored out of my skull today. I don't know why. I've been idly pressing "refresh" on the NaNo forums and Facebook since around 10am. 11 hours ago. I'm feeling weirdly social, but there's no one to talk to. Called Melanie and talked her ear off. She seemed distracted -- maybe upset? But she didn't offer any details, so I guess she didn't want to talk about it. So instead, I blathered for over an hour about ME ME ME. Dreadful habit. A dreadful habit that I'm indulging right now. Someday I'll learn.
Someday I'll also learn to stop making promises I can't keep. So scratch that: No, I'll probably never learn how to share conversations properly. Sorry. You're reading the blog of a selfish, competitive-talker. But I do generally try to be good.
I cleaned the upstairs bathroom today. It's spotless and beautiful and all sorts of other happy words. I removed a whopping total of 17 books from my 9x3 ft bathroom. That's a book every ~2 sqft, or a single stack that comes up to about waist height on me. Bathtub reading is (obviously) a hobby of mine.
I'm all excited about Camp NaNoWriMo. In honor of the silly spirit of NaNo, I'm going to be doing something that is both extreme and ridiculous. For at least the first weekend of NaNo (and probably longer), I'm going to be living in my bathroom.
Yes. You read that properly.
I'm going to try to simulate the camp experience by cramming myself and both puppies into the bathroom during the writing hours. This serves several purposes.
1) My computer cannot connect to the WiFi at home. If I'm at the desk/vanity/whatever by the bathroom sink, I will not have the internet to distract me.
2) No one barges in and pesters you when the bathroom door is closed.
3) I hate to be called "silly" or any variation on that word, but I do enjoy ridiculous endeavors just to lighten up sometimes. I've been in super-serious mode basically since I moved in -- no sense of humor, no sense of adventure. ("And living in a bathroom will change that?" you ask. Hush now. Don't ask questions. You'll break the magic).
4) I like to have a distinctive "this is writing" place, separate from my "this is internet time" places.
5) If I'm not living in my bedroom, I could feasibly get it completely cleaned before the dogs had a chance to make it filthy again. Keeping it clean isn't hard. Getting it clean in the first place is a minor miracle.
6) My parents will be out of town for most of that time = no judgment.
So I'm going to turn my bathroom into a small office, silly as that sounds. If it brings in words, I don't care what I have to do -- I'll do it.
I've been meaning to read The Artist's Way for a while, and I haven't. Can't now -- no money. But I've decided to start doing Morning Pages each morning and Artist Dates once a week. My problem with Artist Dates is that they're supposed to be done alone.
I'm bad at "alone."
I ought to be good at it, really. I've been alone in North Carolina (barring my parents) since last August. But the idea of going somewhere public on my own makes me inexplicably nervous. Can my Artist Dates be "pizza-booze-telly" style, except substituting "popcorn-water-Netflix?" But I guess that's not the point. And I do need to work on confidence in public places.... maybe this will be my excuse?
I sound so decisive, don't I?
Morning pages, though, I think I can do. It's funny. "Write 750 words each morning as soon as you wake up" sounds ridiculously easy. "Then write another 750 words immediately before going to bed" is equally trifling. If both of those were novel writing, I'd be almost at NaNo quota. Sometimes I forget how easy it is to keep up with that. 1,667 sounds so big until you remember it's roughly 30-45 minutes of writing out of a whole 24 hours.
I cleaned the bathroom today. I know I already said that, but it bears repeating. Also, I changed a lightbulb. I'm basically a domestic goddess of broom-wielding prowess.
Still sitting at 30 phases of 300. If I can just get to 75 before I start writing, I'll be okay. (And future-me rereading this post, that's 75 chronological phases, not 75 cumulative. The point is to get past the Act-2 slump, you ninny. Back to your keyboard!)
Two more days to get this beast outlined.
Someday I'll also learn to stop making promises I can't keep. So scratch that: No, I'll probably never learn how to share conversations properly. Sorry. You're reading the blog of a selfish, competitive-talker. But I do generally try to be good.
I cleaned the upstairs bathroom today. It's spotless and beautiful and all sorts of other happy words. I removed a whopping total of 17 books from my 9x3 ft bathroom. That's a book every ~2 sqft, or a single stack that comes up to about waist height on me. Bathtub reading is (obviously) a hobby of mine.
I'm all excited about Camp NaNoWriMo. In honor of the silly spirit of NaNo, I'm going to be doing something that is both extreme and ridiculous. For at least the first weekend of NaNo (and probably longer), I'm going to be living in my bathroom.
Yes. You read that properly.
I'm going to try to simulate the camp experience by cramming myself and both puppies into the bathroom during the writing hours. This serves several purposes.
1) My computer cannot connect to the WiFi at home. If I'm at the desk/vanity/whatever by the bathroom sink, I will not have the internet to distract me.
2) No one barges in and pesters you when the bathroom door is closed.
3) I hate to be called "silly" or any variation on that word, but I do enjoy ridiculous endeavors just to lighten up sometimes. I've been in super-serious mode basically since I moved in -- no sense of humor, no sense of adventure. ("And living in a bathroom will change that?" you ask. Hush now. Don't ask questions. You'll break the magic).
4) I like to have a distinctive "this is writing" place, separate from my "this is internet time" places.
5) If I'm not living in my bedroom, I could feasibly get it completely cleaned before the dogs had a chance to make it filthy again. Keeping it clean isn't hard. Getting it clean in the first place is a minor miracle.
6) My parents will be out of town for most of that time = no judgment.
So I'm going to turn my bathroom into a small office, silly as that sounds. If it brings in words, I don't care what I have to do -- I'll do it.
I've been meaning to read The Artist's Way for a while, and I haven't. Can't now -- no money. But I've decided to start doing Morning Pages each morning and Artist Dates once a week. My problem with Artist Dates is that they're supposed to be done alone.
I'm bad at "alone."
I ought to be good at it, really. I've been alone in North Carolina (barring my parents) since last August. But the idea of going somewhere public on my own makes me inexplicably nervous. Can my Artist Dates be "pizza-booze-telly" style, except substituting "popcorn-water-Netflix?" But I guess that's not the point. And I do need to work on confidence in public places.... maybe this will be my excuse?
I sound so decisive, don't I?
Morning pages, though, I think I can do. It's funny. "Write 750 words each morning as soon as you wake up" sounds ridiculously easy. "Then write another 750 words immediately before going to bed" is equally trifling. If both of those were novel writing, I'd be almost at NaNo quota. Sometimes I forget how easy it is to keep up with that. 1,667 sounds so big until you remember it's roughly 30-45 minutes of writing out of a whole 24 hours.
I cleaned the bathroom today. I know I already said that, but it bears repeating. Also, I changed a lightbulb. I'm basically a domestic goddess of broom-wielding prowess.
Still sitting at 30 phases of 300. If I can just get to 75 before I start writing, I'll be okay. (And future-me rereading this post, that's 75 chronological phases, not 75 cumulative. The point is to get past the Act-2 slump, you ninny. Back to your keyboard!)
Two more days to get this beast outlined.
Heading Into July
Sorry. I know it's been a few weeks since I updated. I'm awful at actually staying consistent with things. Be prepared for awkward two-week gaps between posts on a fairly regular basis.
We're standing on the cusp of July, and I can't seem to get my ass into gear. My working title for The Empty People has changed to Forget Me Not, which fits much better. I was incredibly pleased with myself for that. Although I hate quippy, cliched titles like that. Usually if a title hearkens back to a cliche, I drop the book. But it works so well! We'll call it a working title for now. I'm not 100% sold on it right now, but it's better than The Empty People. So TEP is now FMN.
I'm 29 phases into a Phase Outline, and I can't decide if it's looking fantastic or grim. That's odd -- the two are so different that it's usually a very clear-cut line. I'm expecting the outline to run about 300 phases, which means 29/300 puts me at about 10% of the novel. I'm just finishing the setup, so for a novel of this size and "flavor," that's about where I want to be. So around phase 75, Ineroh needs to show up on Yosseval's doorstep at Periwythen Estates. That means that Y needs to move to Periwythen around phase 60-65, which is comfortably close to where I am right now. Yes. This will work. So I need one more major scene, then the engagement scene, then a magic issue, then Y can creep off to Periwythen. Golden. This will work.
Anyhow. Back on topic. I'm not sure how much of this I need to get plotted before Friday. I'm hoping I can get at least the first 50k (150 phases) written before the month starts, but that's looking questionable. At the very least, I need to get to the point where Ineroh shows up at Yosseval's door. That's the disconnect. There's always one. In my stories, in the 20k-25k range, there's always an awkward "bump" in the writing process where I suddenly realize that everything I've written is shit and I have no idea what I'm doing anymore. Theoretically, I'm hoping the phase outline will eliminate that. The stories usually unravel at the connecting point between the first and second act. I know WHAT happens next, but I stumble over HOW and WHY. The phase outline is forcing me to worry about that now rather than in the middle of writing. I'm hoping I'll be able to skip that step and actually get this damn thing finished.
Part of me wants to try for 100k in July with TEP/FMN and then work on Blood Debt in August. Silly. More than silly: stupid. I need a win. My confidence is at rock-bottom right now, where it has been languishing for several years. I need to prove to myself that Harvest, my first novel, wasn't some monstrous fluke. I haven't written anything substantial since then. A short story. Some flash fiction. Roleplaying posts. Essays. But nothing solid. I don't need a big, flashy finish. I just need to be able to say, "I can do this."
The house is filthy. I want to clean it before Camp starts. Part of my reluctance is the bit-off-more-than-I-could-chew paralysis, which is normal. Part of it is just me being obstinate. Mom has been particularly pushy about me cleaning lately, which is making me resist. I don't want to feel bullied. I think that's a very rational, normal response, but she makes it sound like I'm being a petty child. I don't see it that way. If I give in, if I allow myself to be shouted at, I set precedent that "a firm hand" is what it takes to control me. I do not intend to be bullied into doing things. Therefore, I will not respond positively to bullying. Period.
But it's frustrating, because I want to clean right now, and if she would stop pushing and pulling and shouting and pleading and making a huge deal out of it, I could actually get something done.
I need to move out.
I need to move out.
I wish PetSmart would call me back. I need that job, too.
And this is where I start wallowing in self-pity. No, wait, that happened a few paragraphs ago. I'll spare you the whining for the rest of it. Maybe I can clean the bathroom. That's both necessary and easy, and Mom wouldn't be watching over my shoulder the whole time...
We're standing on the cusp of July, and I can't seem to get my ass into gear. My working title for The Empty People has changed to Forget Me Not, which fits much better. I was incredibly pleased with myself for that. Although I hate quippy, cliched titles like that. Usually if a title hearkens back to a cliche, I drop the book. But it works so well! We'll call it a working title for now. I'm not 100% sold on it right now, but it's better than The Empty People. So TEP is now FMN.
I'm 29 phases into a Phase Outline, and I can't decide if it's looking fantastic or grim. That's odd -- the two are so different that it's usually a very clear-cut line. I'm expecting the outline to run about 300 phases, which means 29/300 puts me at about 10% of the novel. I'm just finishing the setup, so for a novel of this size and "flavor," that's about where I want to be. So around phase 75, Ineroh needs to show up on Yosseval's doorstep at Periwythen Estates. That means that Y needs to move to Periwythen around phase 60-65, which is comfortably close to where I am right now. Yes. This will work. So I need one more major scene, then the engagement scene, then a magic issue, then Y can creep off to Periwythen. Golden. This will work.
Anyhow. Back on topic. I'm not sure how much of this I need to get plotted before Friday. I'm hoping I can get at least the first 50k (150 phases) written before the month starts, but that's looking questionable. At the very least, I need to get to the point where Ineroh shows up at Yosseval's door. That's the disconnect. There's always one. In my stories, in the 20k-25k range, there's always an awkward "bump" in the writing process where I suddenly realize that everything I've written is shit and I have no idea what I'm doing anymore. Theoretically, I'm hoping the phase outline will eliminate that. The stories usually unravel at the connecting point between the first and second act. I know WHAT happens next, but I stumble over HOW and WHY. The phase outline is forcing me to worry about that now rather than in the middle of writing. I'm hoping I'll be able to skip that step and actually get this damn thing finished.
Part of me wants to try for 100k in July with TEP/FMN and then work on Blood Debt in August. Silly. More than silly: stupid. I need a win. My confidence is at rock-bottom right now, where it has been languishing for several years. I need to prove to myself that Harvest, my first novel, wasn't some monstrous fluke. I haven't written anything substantial since then. A short story. Some flash fiction. Roleplaying posts. Essays. But nothing solid. I don't need a big, flashy finish. I just need to be able to say, "I can do this."
The house is filthy. I want to clean it before Camp starts. Part of my reluctance is the bit-off-more-than-I-could-chew paralysis, which is normal. Part of it is just me being obstinate. Mom has been particularly pushy about me cleaning lately, which is making me resist. I don't want to feel bullied. I think that's a very rational, normal response, but she makes it sound like I'm being a petty child. I don't see it that way. If I give in, if I allow myself to be shouted at, I set precedent that "a firm hand" is what it takes to control me. I do not intend to be bullied into doing things. Therefore, I will not respond positively to bullying. Period.
But it's frustrating, because I want to clean right now, and if she would stop pushing and pulling and shouting and pleading and making a huge deal out of it, I could actually get something done.
I need to move out.
I need to move out.
I wish PetSmart would call me back. I need that job, too.
And this is where I start wallowing in self-pity. No, wait, that happened a few paragraphs ago. I'll spare you the whining for the rest of it. Maybe I can clean the bathroom. That's both necessary and easy, and Mom wouldn't be watching over my shoulder the whole time...
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Not As Impressive As Yesterday, But~~ (JuNo Day 2)
Day two: 13,525 / 50,000
Progress today: 3,303 words
Today was a little slower than yesterday. I didn't get started until about 10:45pm, but I still got a really respectable amount done. I'm done with the first 7 days of material in The 90 Day Novel. I wonder if I could cram the 90 day novel into the 30 day novel? At this pace, it certainly seems possible. I don't know if the writing will get slower once I get into the bulk of the process, though, so I'm keeping my goals open-ended. The current best-guess is that I'll be aiming for 50k each in June and July, hoping to finish the 90-day process in 60.
I did the math, and 13,525 words is basically the equivalent of Day 8 of NaNo 0_o It's also about as much as I managed in the whole month of November, and significantly more than I've written in the whole intervening time since NaNo ended. And if I were able to maintain this speed (I won't be, but IF I could), I'd be at 202k by the end of the month.
I reiterate:
Mind = blown.
I'm not going to have much time to write tomorrow. I promised Katie that I would help her clean her whole house, which means I'm going to be spending most of the day with her, which means I have absolutely no idea how much time I'll manage to hoard away for the words. Hopefully we'll be able to finish cleaning the house at a decent hour tomorrow and I'll be able to get home and get some writing done.
^--- This is the attitude I wish I always had. Writing has felt like a chore for so long. I'm almost afraid to talk about how much fun I've had in the past two days, for fear that I'll break it and go back to the tedium.
Progress today: 3,303 words
Today was a little slower than yesterday. I didn't get started until about 10:45pm, but I still got a really respectable amount done. I'm done with the first 7 days of material in The 90 Day Novel. I wonder if I could cram the 90 day novel into the 30 day novel? At this pace, it certainly seems possible. I don't know if the writing will get slower once I get into the bulk of the process, though, so I'm keeping my goals open-ended. The current best-guess is that I'll be aiming for 50k each in June and July, hoping to finish the 90-day process in 60.
I did the math, and 13,525 words is basically the equivalent of Day 8 of NaNo 0_o It's also about as much as I managed in the whole month of November, and significantly more than I've written in the whole intervening time since NaNo ended. And if I were able to maintain this speed (I won't be, but IF I could), I'd be at 202k by the end of the month.
I reiterate:
Mind = blown.
I'm not going to have much time to write tomorrow. I promised Katie that I would help her clean her whole house, which means I'm going to be spending most of the day with her, which means I have absolutely no idea how much time I'll manage to hoard away for the words. Hopefully we'll be able to finish cleaning the house at a decent hour tomorrow and I'll be able to get home and get some writing done.
^--- This is the attitude I wish I always had. Writing has felt like a chore for so long. I'm almost afraid to talk about how much fun I've had in the past two days, for fear that I'll break it and go back to the tedium.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
10k Day
It's 2:25am on June 1, and I'm currently at 6,468 words. I'll go ahead and announce that I started JuNo one hour early, so I've had 3.5 hours of writing time. I'll be stopping an hour early as well, to keep everything fair. No harm, no foul as far as I'm concerned -- the length of the challenge is the same, but staying up until the wee hours of the night is harder for me than it used to be.
I wanted to stay up later to write more (10k in one night would have been such a fantastic thing to brag about, wouldn't it?), but my caffeine is failing me and my eyes are slipping closed. I'm going to try to wake up relatively early tomorrow morning. I'm trying not to let my mother know that I'm writing, because she invariably pokes holes in my ego as soon as she finds out that I'm starting a new project. She's taking summer courses at the local community college from 8am-10am Monday through Thursday. I'm going to try to wake up in time to write during that block, when I KNOW that she'll be consistently out of the house and therefore unable to make commentary on what I'm doing. That will give me a scheduled, established time set aside as "writing time" with built-in privacy. That's the plan, anyway.
If the writing stays at this pace (it won't; I'm not that much of an idealist), I may have to change my goal from 50k to something closer to an actual full draft. I didn't expect to make NEARLY this much progress tonight. I was going to be grateful if I managed to scrape by with just making quota at 1,667. My shoutouts from here on out will probably be much less impressive than this one, but I just couldn't go to bed without telling someone about it.
June 01, 2011, at 11:54pm:
10k. TEN THOUSAND WORDS in 24 hours (and with 6 minutes to spare, too).
Mind = blown.
This is officially the second-most-productive writing day I've ever had. Most productive was the final day of NaNo in '06, when I wrote 12k between 4pm and midnight. Then there was today -- 10k in 24 hours, and totally not burnt out. I'm thinking about doing more, but I promised myself that I could (a) call my writer friend and brag, (b) watch an episode of Doctor Who and (c) read a few more chapters in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn if I finished on time, and I did.
I was originally aiming for 50k in the month of June, but if it continues anywhere close to this pace, I'm going to have to raise my goal. The stuff I'm writing right now is mostly character work and background information. It's in-character, and a lot of it will be going into the actual draft (which works, since I write very-introspective first person), but it isn't traditional narrative. I'm doing Alan Watt's 90 Day Novel program, and I've just finished Day 5's material. I'm going to try to do all the background work (30 days of the 90 day process) in the first half of June, write a long synopsis/really short first draft of the plot (sans introspection and background work) in the second half of June, then combine the two into a genuine full draft during July when CampNaNo opens. Part of my problem when writing the introspective first person narratives in most of my stories is that I can't get the balance right. I kind of wobble all over the place. I figure, if I write them completely separately and then combine them logically, carefully and AFTER I've drafted each part, I'll be able to control the proportions much better. And I'm surprised at the things my characters are telling me in the backstory work that I wouldn't have predicted at all. The story was supposed to be all about Yosseval's magical condition (he's a magic nullifier in a world that functions entirely on magic). Instead, it's mostly about his relationship problems right now (which is totally fine by me, because that ties in VERY heavily with his magic problems, and it's critical to the tragedy at the climax of the story). So Ineroh, the love interest, is getting a lot more attention than I expected her to get. Not complaining. The situation with Ineroh is a good summary for Yosseval's life as a whole, so I'm completely okay with him angsting about her, since (a) it fits with the character, (b) it's not gratuitous (yet), and (c) it's a really comfortable way to sprinkle in exposition while the focus is on another part of the story.
I wanted to stay up later to write more (10k in one night would have been such a fantastic thing to brag about, wouldn't it?), but my caffeine is failing me and my eyes are slipping closed. I'm going to try to wake up relatively early tomorrow morning. I'm trying not to let my mother know that I'm writing, because she invariably pokes holes in my ego as soon as she finds out that I'm starting a new project. She's taking summer courses at the local community college from 8am-10am Monday through Thursday. I'm going to try to wake up in time to write during that block, when I KNOW that she'll be consistently out of the house and therefore unable to make commentary on what I'm doing. That will give me a scheduled, established time set aside as "writing time" with built-in privacy. That's the plan, anyway.
If the writing stays at this pace (it won't; I'm not that much of an idealist), I may have to change my goal from 50k to something closer to an actual full draft. I didn't expect to make NEARLY this much progress tonight. I was going to be grateful if I managed to scrape by with just making quota at 1,667. My shoutouts from here on out will probably be much less impressive than this one, but I just couldn't go to bed without telling someone about it.
June 01, 2011, at 11:54pm:
10k. TEN THOUSAND WORDS in 24 hours (and with 6 minutes to spare, too).
Mind = blown.
This is officially the second-most-productive writing day I've ever had. Most productive was the final day of NaNo in '06, when I wrote 12k between 4pm and midnight. Then there was today -- 10k in 24 hours, and totally not burnt out. I'm thinking about doing more, but I promised myself that I could (a) call my writer friend and brag, (b) watch an episode of Doctor Who and (c) read a few more chapters in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn if I finished on time, and I did.
I was originally aiming for 50k in the month of June, but if it continues anywhere close to this pace, I'm going to have to raise my goal. The stuff I'm writing right now is mostly character work and background information. It's in-character, and a lot of it will be going into the actual draft (which works, since I write very-introspective first person), but it isn't traditional narrative. I'm doing Alan Watt's 90 Day Novel program, and I've just finished Day 5's material. I'm going to try to do all the background work (30 days of the 90 day process) in the first half of June, write a long synopsis/really short first draft of the plot (sans introspection and background work) in the second half of June, then combine the two into a genuine full draft during July when CampNaNo opens. Part of my problem when writing the introspective first person narratives in most of my stories is that I can't get the balance right. I kind of wobble all over the place. I figure, if I write them completely separately and then combine them logically, carefully and AFTER I've drafted each part, I'll be able to control the proportions much better. And I'm surprised at the things my characters are telling me in the backstory work that I wouldn't have predicted at all. The story was supposed to be all about Yosseval's magical condition (he's a magic nullifier in a world that functions entirely on magic). Instead, it's mostly about his relationship problems right now (which is totally fine by me, because that ties in VERY heavily with his magic problems, and it's critical to the tragedy at the climax of the story). So Ineroh, the love interest, is getting a lot more attention than I expected her to get. Not complaining. The situation with Ineroh is a good summary for Yosseval's life as a whole, so I'm completely okay with him angsting about her, since (a) it fits with the character, (b) it's not gratuitous (yet), and (c) it's a really comfortable way to sprinkle in exposition while the focus is on another part of the story.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Rescue
Name: Only the Wise
Prompt: You are a Siamese named Miniver living in a genteel household of intellectuals. Your household is the epitome of elegance, fine breeding and superlative taste. The only discordant note -- at least, as far as you are concerned -- is Zeus, that lower-class mutt who rampages through the house, causing havoc wherever he goes. You cannot understand how your humans could suffer such an uncharacteristic lapse in good taste.
"He's a rescue," the humans said. "We think he was abused."
Everyone thinks their rescue animal has been abused. If — perish the thought — Miniver herself had been found wandering the streets, they would've assumed she had been beaten by children, or run over by a car, rather than spending her days eating wild-caught Alaskan salmon from the fine china. That was the way of humans. They believed themselves to be saints in a world full of marauding demons. Messiah complexes, all of them. Not unlike cats in that aspect, actually.
Miniver licked her paws to settle her nerves. It usually worked, for a little while. Then Zeus would come galumphing around the corner or diving through the kitchen chairs, and the mere shock would send her pristine fur into a tizzy all over again. She spent an obscene amount of time bathing these days. Her poor nerves just couldn’t take it.
"We think he has some Pharaoh Hound in him, or maybe some Bernese Mountain Dog. The vet said he might be part Great Dane, even. A noble breed, of course. Whatever he is, I’m sure it’s a noble breed. Our Zeus is such a stately dog. Even his name — after the god of thunder, you know."
Miniver knew. The thundering sound of his bark. The thundering sound of his feet. The thundering sound of his gas after someone fed him under the table. Miniver knew it all too well. Her pedigree was studded with champions. She could have been one herself, if the show circuit weren't so . . . common. The breeder had said so. “The best kitten this cattery has ever produced, languishing in a pet home,” the breeder had mourned, but Miniver didn't cared. “Languishing” was exactly the sort of life she was cut out for.
If she had known this would be her treatment at home, she would have suffered the show circuit. Even the assault strange hands roaming across her smooth, sinuous body would have been less of an insult than living with this classless beast.
"But it's so strange," the woman said slowly to her dinner companion. "Our dear Miniver has been acting odd since Zeus came home. We think she might be sick. We think she might be allergic to dogs. Francine, darling, do you know anyone who might want a well-bred Siamese? We just couldn't give up Zeus again. He was abused; he's a rescue. I'm sure you understand."
Prompt: You are a Siamese named Miniver living in a genteel household of intellectuals. Your household is the epitome of elegance, fine breeding and superlative taste. The only discordant note -- at least, as far as you are concerned -- is Zeus, that lower-class mutt who rampages through the house, causing havoc wherever he goes. You cannot understand how your humans could suffer such an uncharacteristic lapse in good taste.
"He's a rescue," the humans said. "We think he was abused."
Everyone thinks their rescue animal has been abused. If — perish the thought — Miniver herself had been found wandering the streets, they would've assumed she had been beaten by children, or run over by a car, rather than spending her days eating wild-caught Alaskan salmon from the fine china. That was the way of humans. They believed themselves to be saints in a world full of marauding demons. Messiah complexes, all of them. Not unlike cats in that aspect, actually.
Miniver licked her paws to settle her nerves. It usually worked, for a little while. Then Zeus would come galumphing around the corner or diving through the kitchen chairs, and the mere shock would send her pristine fur into a tizzy all over again. She spent an obscene amount of time bathing these days. Her poor nerves just couldn’t take it.
"We think he has some Pharaoh Hound in him, or maybe some Bernese Mountain Dog. The vet said he might be part Great Dane, even. A noble breed, of course. Whatever he is, I’m sure it’s a noble breed. Our Zeus is such a stately dog. Even his name — after the god of thunder, you know."
Miniver knew. The thundering sound of his bark. The thundering sound of his feet. The thundering sound of his gas after someone fed him under the table. Miniver knew it all too well. Her pedigree was studded with champions. She could have been one herself, if the show circuit weren't so . . . common. The breeder had said so. “The best kitten this cattery has ever produced, languishing in a pet home,” the breeder had mourned, but Miniver didn't cared. “Languishing” was exactly the sort of life she was cut out for.
If she had known this would be her treatment at home, she would have suffered the show circuit. Even the assault strange hands roaming across her smooth, sinuous body would have been less of an insult than living with this classless beast.
"But it's so strange," the woman said slowly to her dinner companion. "Our dear Miniver has been acting odd since Zeus came home. We think she might be sick. We think she might be allergic to dogs. Francine, darling, do you know anyone who might want a well-bred Siamese? We just couldn't give up Zeus again. He was abused; he's a rescue. I'm sure you understand."
Skin Versus Soul, 05/28/11
Name: Play Big
Prompt: You are a musician in a sought-after jazz band. Your name is Clarence and you travel with the band for six months of every year playing concert halls and jazz festivals. How old are you? Give the band a name. Choose your instrument. Portray the other band members and the feeling you get when you play together. Eleanor, a high fashion model, is interested in one of you. She has wiles and she uses them. Will the band survive her foxy tricks and secretive smile?
I never liked that Eleanor chick. The Skin-Toned Skivvies didn't need her type hanging around our dive. She was all skin and no soul; all fur and no fire. Our Rufus could do better.
Well. He certainly couldn't have done worse.
And yet there she was, sitting across from me, the only one in the room without an instrument and somehow unaware of how awkward that made everything. Unless the Chinese crested dog counts as an instrument. He certainly thought he did. The yapping beast hadn't shut up the entire time we were playing. Intermission now and, predictably, the feist had finally shut its mouth once it didn't matter anymore. Eleanor and Rufus didn't seem to mind either way. They were chatting in the corner like a pair of gossiping women, Rufus petting that ridiculous dog and Eleanor running her fingers across the fur trim of her designer coat.
"Clarence," Walter whispered, "I can hear your teeth grinding from here."
"My teeth? Naw. Must be a squeak in my trumpet."
Walter snorted. "I've known Louise since the day you bought her, and that trumpet has never squeaked a day in her life." He paused. "You hate her that much?"
"Hate who?"
And that was enough of an answer for Walter. A slow smile spread across his face. "Me too," he confided. He blew a long note on the saxophone, rich and rumbling with just the right amount of texture. "That's what the band should sound like. That's what the Skivvies used to sound like."
I raised a brow indulgently. "And now?"
The saxophone screamed like a cat on fire. The noise ran the gamut of unpleasant sounds, shriek to yodel to flat, dry cough. Nothing like the elegant wail she normally put out. No sexy shiver crawling up my spine from that sound.
I added a discordant note on Louise for good measure, to show him my agreement. It was fun. It was good. It was boys being boys. It was like how the Skivvies used to be, before Rufus started to care about how we sounded and what we did. He liked to cut up just like the rest of us before Eleanor came along. Now it was all about "quality." Whatever that meant. At 78 years old, I think I've finally lost the distinction between "fun" and "quality." So I tickled Louise in all the wrong ways and let out a belching womph of a note. Cathartic. That's what they call it.
The damn dog barked.
"Rufus! They're upsetting Tybalt." Eleanor's perfect complexion was marred by two bright spots of color on her cheeks. We had flustered the empress. Cue tirade.
I would say, "I have never heard a woman so upset about a little bit of fun," but it's been months since Eleanor joined our practice sessions. I've about heard it to death now, I think.
"If the noise upsets Tybalt, then maybe Tybalt should--" Walter began.
"Walter," Rufus warned.
Enough.
I put Louise back in her case. "Too many women in this room, Rufus. If your Eleanor won't leave, my Louise will."
"Rufus! Are you going to let that man talk to me like that?"
Rufe just stared at me with broken eyes. No soul in him anymore, either -- all skin and bones and guts, that was all she left him. 32 years the Skivvies had been playing together. It hurt to see a friend drained dry like that. "You don't mean that, Clarence."
I hope to God he knew how wrong he was when he said those words.
I tipped my weathered cap to the boys, and even to the lady, noxious as she might be. I wished them all a good night, and I turned on my heel like a right gentleman, all elegance and class. If she wouldn't claim her composure, I would certainly show mine.
As I walked out the door, Walter let out a long, low wail on the saxophone. I fancied that said, "Don't leave me."
I left him anyway. The Skin-Toned Skivvies had no place for a gold-digging woman, but Rufus brought her in anyway. Now they've got a nice big place for a trumpet player all vacant and waiting for someone to step in.
Maybe the dog will suffice.
Prompt: You are a musician in a sought-after jazz band. Your name is Clarence and you travel with the band for six months of every year playing concert halls and jazz festivals. How old are you? Give the band a name. Choose your instrument. Portray the other band members and the feeling you get when you play together. Eleanor, a high fashion model, is interested in one of you. She has wiles and she uses them. Will the band survive her foxy tricks and secretive smile?
I never liked that Eleanor chick. The Skin-Toned Skivvies didn't need her type hanging around our dive. She was all skin and no soul; all fur and no fire. Our Rufus could do better.
Well. He certainly couldn't have done worse.
And yet there she was, sitting across from me, the only one in the room without an instrument and somehow unaware of how awkward that made everything. Unless the Chinese crested dog counts as an instrument. He certainly thought he did. The yapping beast hadn't shut up the entire time we were playing. Intermission now and, predictably, the feist had finally shut its mouth once it didn't matter anymore. Eleanor and Rufus didn't seem to mind either way. They were chatting in the corner like a pair of gossiping women, Rufus petting that ridiculous dog and Eleanor running her fingers across the fur trim of her designer coat.
"Clarence," Walter whispered, "I can hear your teeth grinding from here."
"My teeth? Naw. Must be a squeak in my trumpet."
Walter snorted. "I've known Louise since the day you bought her, and that trumpet has never squeaked a day in her life." He paused. "You hate her that much?"
"Hate who?"
And that was enough of an answer for Walter. A slow smile spread across his face. "Me too," he confided. He blew a long note on the saxophone, rich and rumbling with just the right amount of texture. "That's what the band should sound like. That's what the Skivvies used to sound like."
I raised a brow indulgently. "And now?"
The saxophone screamed like a cat on fire. The noise ran the gamut of unpleasant sounds, shriek to yodel to flat, dry cough. Nothing like the elegant wail she normally put out. No sexy shiver crawling up my spine from that sound.
I added a discordant note on Louise for good measure, to show him my agreement. It was fun. It was good. It was boys being boys. It was like how the Skivvies used to be, before Rufus started to care about how we sounded and what we did. He liked to cut up just like the rest of us before Eleanor came along. Now it was all about "quality." Whatever that meant. At 78 years old, I think I've finally lost the distinction between "fun" and "quality." So I tickled Louise in all the wrong ways and let out a belching womph of a note. Cathartic. That's what they call it.
The damn dog barked.
"Rufus! They're upsetting Tybalt." Eleanor's perfect complexion was marred by two bright spots of color on her cheeks. We had flustered the empress. Cue tirade.
I would say, "I have never heard a woman so upset about a little bit of fun," but it's been months since Eleanor joined our practice sessions. I've about heard it to death now, I think.
"If the noise upsets Tybalt, then maybe Tybalt should--" Walter began.
"Walter," Rufus warned.
Enough.
I put Louise back in her case. "Too many women in this room, Rufus. If your Eleanor won't leave, my Louise will."
"Rufus! Are you going to let that man talk to me like that?"
Rufe just stared at me with broken eyes. No soul in him anymore, either -- all skin and bones and guts, that was all she left him. 32 years the Skivvies had been playing together. It hurt to see a friend drained dry like that. "You don't mean that, Clarence."
I hope to God he knew how wrong he was when he said those words.
I tipped my weathered cap to the boys, and even to the lady, noxious as she might be. I wished them all a good night, and I turned on my heel like a right gentleman, all elegance and class. If she wouldn't claim her composure, I would certainly show mine.
As I walked out the door, Walter let out a long, low wail on the saxophone. I fancied that said, "Don't leave me."
I left him anyway. The Skin-Toned Skivvies had no place for a gold-digging woman, but Rufus brought her in anyway. Now they've got a nice big place for a trumpet player all vacant and waiting for someone to step in.
Maybe the dog will suffice.
The Purpose of the Blog
I'm so damn sick of talking about writing and getting nothing written. I call myself a writer. When the ego swells, I'll call myself an author, too. But the last novel I finished was in 2005, at the age of 17. It's 2011. I'm 22 now. I can't even say that I'm "resting on my laurels," because what sort of pathetic laurel is Harvest, anyway? It's trash. So I'm coasting on my past success, and that success was garbage. What does that say about me?
Don't answer that. Please.
I used to love writing. I think I've been going about this the wrong way the whole time. In recent years, I've started a dozen attempts to reignite my writing life, and every one has failed. I told myself I was scared of the blank page, which is true. I told myself that I'd gained my editor eyes and had trouble writing less-than-perfect prose, which was also true. But the part that I never managed to notice (despite the fact that everyone else noticed it) is that I just didn't love writing anymore. I knew I loved the idea of writing. I knew I wanted to be an author. But I had somehow forgotten the critical part where you truly enjoy the process of creating, playing in your mental sandbox. I forgot how much fun it can be to take a handful of ideas and smash them together like trying to spark a fire from flint and steel. I remembered how to write for a purpose, and how to express myself, but I forgot about the literary version of a joy ride -- not an attempt to get somewhere, but for entertainment. I was writing for the purpose of getting things written. I started things so that I could get to the end. That's rubbish! The point of writing is the writing. That's all it needs.
So that's what I'm posting here. This is my attempt to love writing again. It used to be what I did with all of my time. It was my preferred hobby, and my own mind was my best friend. (Don't quote me on that). So for a little while, this is my sandbox. As Ms. Frizzle used to say, "Take chances. Make mistakes. Get messy!"
Two weeks ago, Haven went to the dog park. She found the nastiest patch of mud in the whole place and proceeded to wallow in it until she honestly didn't look like a dog anymore. Her fur was plastered to her body in dirt-covered dreadlocks, her ears were slicked to her head, and her tail was wagging like she'd never had so much fun in her life. I want that feeling. This is my attempt to claim it.
Don't answer that. Please.
I used to love writing. I think I've been going about this the wrong way the whole time. In recent years, I've started a dozen attempts to reignite my writing life, and every one has failed. I told myself I was scared of the blank page, which is true. I told myself that I'd gained my editor eyes and had trouble writing less-than-perfect prose, which was also true. But the part that I never managed to notice (despite the fact that everyone else noticed it) is that I just didn't love writing anymore. I knew I loved the idea of writing. I knew I wanted to be an author. But I had somehow forgotten the critical part where you truly enjoy the process of creating, playing in your mental sandbox. I forgot how much fun it can be to take a handful of ideas and smash them together like trying to spark a fire from flint and steel. I remembered how to write for a purpose, and how to express myself, but I forgot about the literary version of a joy ride -- not an attempt to get somewhere, but for entertainment. I was writing for the purpose of getting things written. I started things so that I could get to the end. That's rubbish! The point of writing is the writing. That's all it needs.
So that's what I'm posting here. This is my attempt to love writing again. It used to be what I did with all of my time. It was my preferred hobby, and my own mind was my best friend. (Don't quote me on that). So for a little while, this is my sandbox. As Ms. Frizzle used to say, "Take chances. Make mistakes. Get messy!"
Two weeks ago, Haven went to the dog park. She found the nastiest patch of mud in the whole place and proceeded to wallow in it until she honestly didn't look like a dog anymore. Her fur was plastered to her body in dirt-covered dreadlocks, her ears were slicked to her head, and her tail was wagging like she'd never had so much fun in her life. I want that feeling. This is my attempt to claim it.
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