No, ain't a'gonna do it.
But I have to say I was poking around on the NaNoWriMo site (which is much fancier than it was when I last competed) and was amused to find this as a discussion thread in the forum:
I Hate Myself and Want to Die
I am a talentless hack. Why do I do this to myself every year?
I'm not doing it, though.
I'm not. I don't have any ideas. I don't have any time. I don't want to.
I'm not remembering the year I didn't start until November 9 and finished by November 25. (I was YOUNGER then. Two whole years younger. At my age, that was a lot of brain cells ago.) I did most of that on company time back then, too. Can't do that kind of thing any more, just isn't right. Not even if I can just stick it on my blog and don't have to keep sending files back and forth.
Also, I think, I was less resistant to the idea of just writing any old crap, just for the sake of writing, when I did it before. After all, I wasn't doing any other writing (besides the political blog), so what did it matter?
Today, I don't have three hours a day to spend beating my brain against the wall of original fiction. I need to spend the time finishing the S.E.N.
So. Totally. Not. Doing. It.
Shutup, shutup, shutup, stupid brain.
P.S. This is why you ought not NaNo.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:13 PMA few days ago, I got an e-mail from Michael Moore insisting that those of us Politically Left don't need clean socks that badly. We don't need to sweep the kitchen floor or even go to work, not for the next few days. What we need is to get out there and help Get Out The Vote.
And I thought...there speaks a man who doesn't do his own laundry. There's not a chance in hell he'll visit his bureau and find himself sockless.
NaNoWriMo begins on Monday. I'm already sending love and encouragement to those I know who are participating this year. Especially those In A Pickle due to the mysterious disappearance of the World's Most Perfect NaNoPen.
(If anything would tempt me to NaNo this year, it would be, aside from the pleasure of pleasing the Pickle, the idea of blogging my novel as it happens. That's what Blogger is pushing this year.)
(If anything would convince me not to NaNo this year, it's the idea that my first-draft embarrassments would be out there, in all their shame, for the world to see. Not that the world stops by here, but still.)
A Kind Friend who has been seeking employment finally found it...and after one day on the job, she hates it. Me, I always hate a new job the first few days. I loathe and abominate being the newbie, the dummy, and the know-nothing. It wears off...although not as quickly as it did when I was 30. (I can feel my brain calcifying these days.) Anyhow, I counseled her to give it a week or so and then if she still hates it, to cut her losses and run.
Also, she has other problems. Everyone take a moment and send her a bit of good pastry karma to help out with those concrete piecrusts.
The Lily Lady is graduation-bound this spring. She's going to be Highly, Highly Eddicated, an accomplishment for which I intend to congratulate her while reserving the right to abuse her on every other subject under the sun.
Don't let anyone tell you spending money on a college education will solve all your problems. No matter what degree you get, I'll still be here.
I always thought I was pretty much of a champion when it comes to passive-aggressive behavior, but I have to take my (metaphorical) hat off to BossyBoots (and beat him to death with it). For the past week, no matter what topic I send him an e-mail on, he's been very careful to answer the e-mails, but he's been equally careful to avoid answering the questions therein.
I know what his problem is, of course. He's in a snit because I sent him a stream of e-mails asking about the status of projects that he's had lying around for the past few weeks. It started when someone called me to complain they'd been waiting a month for him to answer a question. (I got the answer in 20 seconds, e-mailed it to BossyBoots, and instructed him to call the client.)
Then I checked the system and found five other projects that, if one assumes a lack of update notes indicates a lack of action, have been catching dust in various corners for about that long. So, I e-mailed to ask him what was up with them. (I take it back...he's not actually answering all of my e-mails, but I know if I go look in the system, he'll have put notes in by the end of today. )
(We're having a little passive-aggressive war about it, silently. My point is that if he makes a major change in status on a client, which he does once or twice a month, he should send out an e-mail, the way the rest of us do if we make status changes. He thinks that if he puts a note in, on those occasions that he does put in notes, that should be good enough.
He's only working with a few clients, so I could go look for myself when I'm compiling the weekly status report...but he doesn't always put notes in, I'm not his f__king secretary, and I'm not chasing him down every week to ask him what he's done. I'm handling 153 clients to his 11, so I really don't have time for his shit.)
Sorry. Had a little moment. I'm a bit tired of him this week.
Tonight I’m getting together with Coco. It's odd that we really only get together every 2-3 months...but that's how life goes. I cherish her for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being she's one of my few entirely non-fandom friends. She has no idea of my Sekrit Life as a pornographer. When I was writing madly, that made spending time with her rather complicated.
"What have you been up to?"
"Ummm...nothing."
That was our conversation for two years.
Nowadays, of course, I don't have that problem, but I always say you have to love a friend who can stick with you through two years of that kind of crap. I have a couple of other non-fandom friends as well, but I see them even less often than I see Coco.
I no longer see Tuffy the Tank. She blames me for the dissolution of her business relationship with Alvin. Since she and Coco recommended me for the job with Alvin, it was her perspective that I "owed her" and that I should use my charm and influence to pass along inside information and be her champion with Alvin.
First, I'm not like that, and she knows it. What on earth made her think I was any more likely to do that now than I've been for the last ten years? Second, on those few occasions I did try to tell her she was screwing up in a major way, she chose not to alter her behavior. Third, the amount of charm I possess is negligible and the "influence" I have with an employer who knows I'm a personal friend of hers and is on the look-out for Undue Influence being exerted is even more negligible.
Negligible is a difficult word to type.
Anyhow, she and I weren't so much "personal friends" as I think she made Alvin believe. It's not like we spent much time together, outside a work environment. In the ten years I've known her, I think I've seen her four times outside of a business setting. This is not friendship.
Coco and I get together half a dozen times a year. That may not be the world's tightest friendship, but it counts. When I was unemployed, she took me out for lunch occasionally and cheered me up. When she was underemployed and struggling to make ends meet, I returned the favor. And, of course, we've always bonded over the topic of Tuffy's myriad insanities.
I've been frantically busy so far this morning, so I should probably call this mid-morning break "over" and get back to it.
I'm contemplating the weekend and waiting, with breathless anticipation, to see if I actually make it to tomorrow's Fair Vote Colorado training session. Back when I was political, I was signed up to do poll-watching this year. Now I'm off the whole political thing and I'm thinking...not so much with wasting a Saturday morning that way.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:52 AMOh, no! I forgot to write an entry today. I'm not very good at doing things regularly.
Once again, I have called you together to report...nothing.
After work yesterday I had to have my hair done and that's a two-hour process. By the time I got home with my drive-through dinner, and got that eaten, it was 8:45 and I was exhausted.
Tuesday I watched the new Navy NCIS episode, then the repeat they aired after it. Then I sat down to read for a while and the next thing I knew, it was 11:30.
Today, virtuously enough, I worked straight through, from 8:00 until just now (2:30), with only a brief, 15-minute interval for stuffing down some lunch.
I worked yesterday, as well. Pretty much all day.
No writing this week at all.
It's some kind of karmic conspiracy. Now that I finally have the whole stupid S.E.N. straightened out in my mind and I know exactly what needs to be written, I don't have time to work on it.
I am...embittered.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:37 PMToday, I'm working.
Check out Works In Progress.
Fan fiction on the internet is revitalising classic stories and bringing back an oral tradition to society
Heh.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:26 PMThis could end in tears and recriminations.
This blasted writing thing. I mean, if I weren't fed up because of the S.E.N., I'd be writing DS and XF next.
I had (okay, stole) an interesting idea for a DS story. Not a great DS story, but possibly a cute enough little effort. I've been watching a bit of DS recently and I think it could work.
I had an interesting (okay, perverse) idea for an XF PWP. I wrote a lot of odd (okay, perverse) little stories in XF. Another one couldn't hurt. Right?
For one wild and crazy moment I was tempted....but, no! I'm not getting sucked back into the vortex o'porn!
I'm just writing this one. That's all. Then I'm going to stop. Anyone sees me reaching for a pen after I get the S.E.N. off my back, please hit me with a brick and put a bag over my head.
Lemme see...what else is going on?
Blanketman has started apologizing for bothering me. I'm not sure why. He's always there, outside Starbucks, with his orange blanket over his head, asking for spare change. I don't usually have any change, so I give him a dollar every couple of days. This morning he apologized. Maybe it was because I was carrying two cups of coffee, a manila folder, and a piece of pumpkin bread.
Also, when I accidentally pulled out a five at first, he said that was too much. Well, yeah, it is, but what kind of homeless person would say so?
I saw the BaGiMan yesterday, but the light was green so I couldn't give him anything. He's the other one I hand a buck to sometimes. Only when I hit that light red, though. If I hit it green, he's out of luck. He always calls me, BabyGirl when I give him a dollar. Since I'm pushing fifty (but not very hard yet), I find that rewarding.
You meet the nicest people, on the streets some days, you know?
Like SmilinSam. I haven't seen him for months now, but it used to be that every morning, when I came out of the building and headed for Starbucks, he'd walk past me and give me a big smile. And all he wanted in return was a smile and a 'good morning'. He never asked for money. I think he moved on to a new corner or something. I miss his smile sometimes.
I don't like to encourage homelessness, especially as winter comes on. That's why I give homeless people some money sometimes. Maybe if they collect enough, they can get some food or a night's shelter, you know?
And I'm a sucker for the ones with the signs that say, "Vietnam Vet." I still have a whole generational-guilt thing going there.
Okay...what else? My favorite Starbucks guy is leaving. He says it's time. He doesn't know what he's going to do, but he's sure something will come up. I think he feels the election (his site) will go the right way and that there will be a lot of opportunities out there in a few months. I wish him luck.
I'm beginning to see that the only thing more boring than me droning on about my writing is me trying desperately to find something else to talk about.
I mean, it's fabulously interesting to me that I've written and re-written and filled in gaps until all of the out-of-order scenes are now slotted into the body of the story. In official writing terms, I have only the crisis, climax, and resolution left to write. (None of which have anything to do with sex.) (Well, okay, since I'm running two plots, one of them will climax, forgive the term, in a sex scene, but technically those words don't necessarily refer to anything sexual. Not in a writing context.)
It never quite got good but I will say that, slowly but surely, it's beginning to suck less. I wasn't that crazy about the other long OaT story I wrote but it was better, as a piece of fanfiction, than this one is. The characterization was better, especially for Mac. The development of the slash plot was more linear and was, I think, better-constructed.
This one has a better-developed case story plot (although much of that may disappear in the editing), but that doesn't improve it as slash. It would take more talent than I possess and more time than I'm willing to spend to balance the "case story" plot and the "slash" plot against each other properly.
I still haven't decided if I'll be sharing this one publicly. (I know...you listened to me bitch and moan for two months and that was above and beyond. But, just think! If you get lucky, you might not have to read it.) I still don't regret the experiment, though. I always whined that I wanted to write long, plotty stories. Now I know better. (Heck, I should have known better when I turned out a 36-card outline* even without any of the slash-plot filled in.)
(*I don't regret that either. I still maintain I've had more fun arranging my colored index cards and colored pens and colored flags than I have writing the story.)
All in all, I'm feeling good about the effort.
One year I finished NaNoWriMo. That effort clocked in just over 60,000 words. I never finished the novel in question, but I still could some day and I'm happy about that one because it was original fiction, not fanfiction. It was a fantasy story with original characters in a whole made-up fantasy world I constructed.
And before this, I'd written two fanfiction stories that went over 50,000 words. This will be my third fanfiction "novel."
Maybe each of these actually just proves I'm better when I'm shorter, but by gosh I did write some longer stuff. I am capable of it.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:37 PMNot talking about the SEN, when it's where 80% of my free time is going, that was a strain. Heh. If it hadn't been for talking about how I wasn't talking about it, I don't know if I'd have been able to take it.
The monster climbed to just over 50,000 words this weekend. Nine more scenes to write...including the dreaded, hives-inducing Sex Scene (if this one turns out to have explicit sex, instead of fade-to-black, which isn't at all certain yet), and then on to Major Revisions. Or maybe six scenes, because I figured out a way to cut three more out this morning. I think anyone returning to writing after a four or five year hiatus should be granted a sort of grace period before they're required to write sex scenes again, don't you?
I was telling someone in e-mail this morning that I can't wait for the SEN to be done and gone, so I can return to being a non-writer, and that's true. It's just appalling to me how much time this takes. And how much of my brain the process of writing occupies. I have other things I want to be doing with my life, dammit!
In other news, this weekend I did some shopping. It was very exciting. I bought a ream of paper and a couple of print cartridges.
And a lamp for my bedroom and one of those plastic mats that let you roll your wheelie chair around on carpet and a wheelie chair to roll. And a new coat. And a piece of cheesecake.
It's hard to tell which of them I'm enjoying more.
Certainly I needed a decent chair to sit in while I write. And light...light is always important. I hate sitting in a tiny pool of light in a dark room. And if you have a carpet and a wheelie chair, you need a plastic mat, because what's the point of a wheelie chair if you can't wheelie around in it?
But, all things considered, I think that the cheesecake won.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:39 PMI forgot to say that the other night I dreamed I was dancing uphill across a lawn blossoming with potato chips while the handsome neighbor man played classic pop music for me and watched me from his front window.
Junk food, voyeurism, and Tony Bennett. All in one package.
I don't often remember my dreams so I'm proud that when I do, they're peculiar. This one wasn't as peculiar as the one with the lava, the garage door opener, and the governor's mother, but it was peculiar.
When I was young, I had serial dreams. I had an entire dream universe that I visited and revisited, and I had on-going story lines with characters who lived there and everything.
Say what you will about my mental stability today, I'm in closer touch with reality than I was twenty years ago.
This has been heckweek. Not quite bad enough to qualify as hellweek, but bad. Intermittent phone and e-mail problems all week long, leaving me here twiddling my thumbs and watching the minutes saunter by.
(P.S. Now I'm just writing down random scenes and lines as they occur to me. I'll make them fit into The Thing somehow. I've never written a train wreck before. It's...interesting.)
About that...you know...that thing I'm not talking about. I yanked another 300 or so words out of one of the scenes I wrote out of order, one of the ones I'm now trying to fit into The Actual Thing So Far and that scene, too, is much improved by being shortened.
Out Of Order #2 wasn't bad. I pulled a couple of hundred words out of that one and I think most of what's left will work fine.
The third and final pre-written scene...well, it's only three pages. If I have to trash two of those, it's not a catastrophe.
Writing scenes out of order? Never again.
Just imagine how spectacular the Thing could be if this keeps up, though. I mean, if I delete 20,000 words, I could wind up with something brilliant.
It occurred to me this morning that it would be very interesting to write a non-case, case story. I mean a story where they're on a case, but I never actually talk about the case, except for incidental details. Where the only thing described is the characters' interaction with each other. It could be fascinating to write. You could drive the readers nuts dropping hints about the actual case, then distracting them by describing how the guys are distracted by each other.
(This is not under consideration for the current Thing. It's more of a sort of Future or Contemplated Inspiration.)
Current Revelations include the notion that if, when you start the story, one character is already convinced that what makes happiness is a roll in the hay with the other character, then you don't have to go through that laborious process of showing how he discovers this fact. Much work, sweat, and cursing could be elminated. (Of course, that's just a PWP with more words, but still....)
Posted by AnneZook at 08:12 AMI can't think of many. I started off the morning on a bad note by dumping a full cup of coffee on the carpet outside my apartment door. That means that whenever I get home tonight, I have some spot-cleaning to do.
Whenever I get home. I'm supposed to be going to a meeting tonight, for Fair Vote Colorado. I'd originally volunteered to do some poll-watching on Election Day, but that was in the heyday of my political passion. Now that I'm stepping back from that whole thing, I don't want to go any more. (And yet...part of me says I should do something, at least once in my life, to protect democracy and open voting, you know?)
Anyhow, it sounds boring and PBS is currently running an exceptionally good special (last night, tonight, tomorrow night) on the history of the American Musical. Tonight at 8:00 they should be getting into the heart of Cole Porter territory and I'm reluctant to miss it.
Of course, I'll miss it anyhow, unless they decide to push the season opener for West Wing back until next week (because of the World Series). To be honest, I barely watched West Wing last year. I mean, the television was on every Wednesday night, but the only time I ever looked up from my book was when they broke for commercial since I was responsible for taping the episodes and we always try to tape without commercials.
This year, I care even less than I did last year and I think I may have to tell my roommate that if she wants the show commercial-free, she'll have to do it herself. I can't imagine many things I'm less interested in than wasting an hour on Wednesday evenings trying to make a "clean" copy of a show that bores me silly these days.
I mean, I didn't expect to like the show as much without Sorkin, but I had no idea it would become so banal so quickly. It surprises me how fast the characters I loved lost their charm for me.
Well, sort of surprises me. Not entirely. I'm a dialogue whore, no doubt about it, and the show now sounds just like any other show on television. The magic was in the words. I'm even entirely indifferent to the speculation that the show will be renewed with a Republican President taking over from Barlett. Without Sorkin's brain behind it, the concept is still different, but the execution is no more challenging or thought-provoking than that of a hundred other shows
The only thing I'm enjoying this year is Navy NCIS.
The Mountain Man showed up five minutes ago and I bought $20 worth of junk food. I figure by the time I get 2,000 or 3,000 calories worth of this stuff inside me, the day will have improved immensely. I've had about 800 in chocolate already and I'm feeling a tad more cheerful.
We've been having e-mail problems off and on for the last week here at the office. Mail comes in but it hangs for hours going out and sometimes doesn't arrive at its destination at all. I finally gave up and created an alias in my personal e-mail account, so I'd have a reliable way to send e-mail. I do 70% - 80% of my job via e-mail. It's a bit tricky to have it stop working.
Remember that thing we aren't talking about? The one I was working on yesterday while I was waiting for my meeting to start? Clocking in today at just over 44,000 words.* I did a bit of editing last night. It was appalling. You just can't change directions radically every five minutes on a story without creating an incredible mess.
Of course, it helps that most of my direction changes have taken place only in my mind. Usually before I actually get my hands on the story file, I've change my mind about the latest change I'd planned and I wind up sitting there, staring at the words on the screen and wondering if I might prefer to take up embroidery or snake-charming for a hobby.
But...I almost forgot. We're not talking about that.
(* But I will say that I went back in and remove 500 of those and improved it immensely. That's the interesting thing about my writing...the more I remove, the better it looks.)
Posted by AnneZook at 01:14 PMIf I spent as much time writing as I do making excuses for not writing or talking about writing, I'd have this stupid story done already and be on to the next one.
In any case, it did finally occur to me that the four or five of you reading this blog are actually friends of mine and ones I'd be sorry to alienate. With that in mind, it might be better if I talked a little less about a story that most of you (kind promises to read notwithstanding) don't actually care that much about. You might like me better. (It's all about the popularity.)
Anyhow. I'm making a Resolution (to go with my Revelations) to stop posting entries about the SEN for the next few days. That means that even if I'm on a manic upswing because I think I've thought of some Silver Bullet Solution to this ongoing disaster, I'll keep it to myself.
Also, as near as I can tell, since Sassy and the Mad Doctor are scheduled to be in town today, along with Buehler making a flying stop, I'll probably be tied up in all-day meetings.
Or, not. For the most part, they still treat me like a temp, which in a sense I am. (In theory, I think I'm still supposed to be shifted back to Alvin's care once he gets the money flowing.) I'm not always invited to these little sessions.
If I'm not meeting, I'll be sitting here, working with care and dedication.
I will not be writing on the you-know-what. Nor will I be writing blog entries about the ideas I had last night.
Happy Tuesday.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:12 AMRevelation #1, which we first discussed on Friday, involved (to refresh your memories) rearranging scenes for no better reason than it occurred to me that while I have heard of people picking up entire scenes and dropping them into a story in a different place, I've never done that before and it might be an interesting experiment.
I dragged out my little index cards and moved things around happily for an hour or two Friday evening. Nothing fit in any new places...until the moment when, indeed, it turned out that one scene would be better placed earlier in the story. (Those people who write the writing books sometimes know what they're talking about.)
Revelation #2 revolved around precisely what this story is about. You'd think I'd have worked that out before I got 90+ pages written, but I've always been a bit backward. Anyhow, I changed my mind and it's no longer a case story with romantic interludes, now it's a romance with detective interruptions. It needs less details about the "case" and a lot more UST.
This weekend I managed to eliminate five "case" scenes under the assumption that I don't need all those boring 'plot development' bits any more anyhow, what I need is more focus on the characters' interaction.
I may have been a bit hasty. Now I have up to the "middle" of the story written but I eliminated everything between said middle and the crisis/resolution. I'm thinking the occasional reader inadvertently paying attention to the "case" part of the story may find that a bit abrupt.
Also, while the "case" was well-defined in my mind, I'm not quite, at least yet, clear about the development of the slash plot.* So, it's always possible I should, instead, go back and remove the slash plot and just write a gen "case story" sort of story. (Of course, "well-defined" doesn't necessarily equal "interesting," so that will introduce new problems.)
Revelation #3 is connected to yet another experiment I tried with this story. That's this idea of writing something that won't happen until you've filled in the forty pages of 'story' that leads up to it. As I recall mentioning, probably repeatedly, this, also was a new concept for me.
I wrote three scenes out of order that way, then realized I was writing the "fun bits" and that if I didn't control myself, I'd wind up someday with nothing but the "boring bits" to write and that, me being me, I'd never get them written.
Now that I'm shoving the SEN down the road toward those pre-written scenes, I'm finding that the scenes, as originally conceived, don't fit the story, as actually written.
I knew this would happen. It's just not possible to write things out of order. How can you possibly know exactly what's going to happen between page 1 and page 75, so that the scene you're writing that will start on page 76 is going to be appropriate?
You can't. If you try, it doesn't.
Now I have to face either re-writing those scenes, even though they're better, in their original form, than most of the stuff I've written to lead up to them, or of just tossing them and writing something entirely new for that spot in the story.
In conclusion, over the weekend, I did rather a lot of editing on the stuff I've already written. I added a certain amount of content here and there to fit Revelation #2, most of it pretty clunky. (It hurts my brain to read it and I'm my most forgiving reader.**)
I wrote nothing new. The last quarter of the story is still languishing there unwritten because of all these issues I'm having. (Or, rather, the last third of the story is half-written, in two separate scenes, but they don't connect properly with what goes before them because they were written out of order.)
And, to finish off with, let me mention that I watched more episodes this weekend. As it turns out, many of the lines of dialogue I was concerned about in the SEN do, in fact, sound just like the characters on-screen.
Considering how badly written most of the show was, I don't find that comforting. (I'm at the point where nothing is going to be comforting.)
It's all very aggravating. I swear, I know I've always complained about writing, but I'm just sure it wasn't this hard before.
The "case story" is boring because the OCs refused to become three-dimensional and the romantic story is lifeless and unconvincing and the next time I say, "Hey! I think I'll write a story!" I'd hope my real friends will hold me down and medicate me until the urge passes.
=====================
* I don't know. The last time I tried to write for these characters, it was all very clear. This time, I know the potential is there but I can't figure out how to get them started.
There has to be the Magic Moment, you know? That moment when your narrative character faces up to what he wants. When he identifies what he wants. Victor's my narrative character and he's cooperating reasonably well, but he can't do it alone and Mac isn't cooperating at all. He's completely and entirely bored.
It's very important. The development of the entire romance is defined by that moment and so far this story lacks that turning point. (I call it the "trigger." It's the moment that the character not only defines what he wants but also becomes willing to take risks to attain it.***)
___________________________
** Okay, it's possible that's not entirely true. But in the sense that I'm the only one who knows what I meant to say, so that my brain is more inclined to fill in gaps in my writing than anyone else's brain would be, in that sense, it's true.
___________________________
*** "A properly asked question answers itself."
And this, in the end, is why I blog so endlessly about the process of writing. I'm really asking myself questions.
There's the answer I was looking for, right there.
Revelation #4. Risk. And now I know why the romantic plot is boring.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:19 PMHaving sauntered into work at 8:20 instead of my more usual 7:20, I thought I should buckle right down to it today.
So, I'm writing a blog entry.
The weekend! A topic I have very little to say about, I'm afraid. I mean, I had a good weekend, but it wasn't full of adventurous excitements.
Saturday I shopped. Lacy underthings! (It's amazing how much stuff you have to replace even when you've only lost a measly 22 lbs.)
And some new jammies that someone I know said were hideous but she's just jealous, I'm sure. What's not to like about fluffly pink jammies? They're warm and soft and an amazing sort of baby-girl-pink shade. I put them on and wore them around the apartment for a while Saturday evening but they're actually too warm to wear right now, so I've laid them aside until winter actually arrives.
Also, sadly, I bought chocolate. The problem with the Outlet Mall is that they have a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factor there. I ate well over a quarter of a pound of it between Saturday evening and Sunday. That's not good for the diet. I made up for it (in a limited way) by skipping dinner last night. Tonight I'll be restricting myself to a main dish of fish with some sweet, crisp watermelon to finish off on.
Or, not. I'm thinking I'm not doing very well on the diet this time, so maybe I should take a week "off" and then buckle down and do it right for a few weeks after that. Just until I lose this last 4 lbs I want to lose.
I had a Major Revelation on Friday, after the one I blogged about, even, so let's call this one Revelation #2, but when it came right down to it, I didn't do anything with it in a writing sense over the weekend. I think it's a Desk Problem. When I'm at the office, I have a nice, big desk with plenty of light and a good chair to sit in. Long years of experience make me associate this set-up with "being productive" (in my own special fashion).
At home I lounge in a recliner. It's just the wrong ambiance. I have a fabulous table in my room that would be perfect for writing (it's actually a drafting table) but I don't have a chair. Also, it's fine up until 10:00 in the morning, but the only window in the room faces east, so after that time, it's too dark. So I need a lamp, too.
A computer wouldn't hurt. I mean, I can't move the PC in and out of my room every ten minutes depending on what stage I'm at at the moment, can I? To do any serious writing I really would need a computer. So I need to buy a laptop.
A chair, a lamp, and a laptop.
I could settle for a chair and a lamp, I guess. Laptops are pretty cheap right now, though, and it's not like I need a top-of-the-line one or anything. Just something I can load Word onto.
I'm back to finding excuses instead of writing, I know.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:24 AMMy brain desperately wants to dink with the story right now but I have a meeting in sixty seconds.
I have exciting ideas for rearranging scenes. They won't necessarily improve the story, but they'll be fun to mess with.
Later....
Also, now that I'm 92 pages into this monster, the stupid OCs are finally starting to come into focus. Nothing like waiting until the last second, guys. Thanks for playing.
(Okay, one of them has started to come into focus. But he was just an idiot-shaped blob up until now, so it's a good sign. I have hopes that if I 'fix' him, the others will stop just sitting there like sullen rocks in the stream of the story.)
Sigh. Victor's not very freaking poetic, okay? I could do a lot more if I had a narrative voice that allowed me more scope. Having to stick tightly to his POV in all the scenes can be very limiting.
I know I said I was going to give up on writing a "real" story with the sort of structure you expect from a "real" story, but part of my brain remains obsessed about the idea. During those moments when I forget about it, my writing is a lot better, but during those moments I'm still dinking with it, I'm having a lot of fun. It's very complicated to be me sometimes.
I want to steal 92 pieces of company paper and a lot of printer toner and print the story, then sit here and draw lines around bits and make notes about moving them elsewhere in the story, but that would just be wrong.
Also, Buehler called and he didn't fly out today, he's flying out tomorrow instead, so there's always the possibility he might come strolling in at any moment. I'd hate to be caught sitting here editing the SEN at such a moment.
Sitting here writing blog entries isn't much more virtuous, of course. And I meant to stop whining about the SEN, but I forgot.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:38 AMOkay, let's get the complaints out of the way first.
It's bad enough that the Tweenybopper has such a loud voice. I mean, I have a loud voice, so I can sympathize. But if she's going to take to making her phone calls using the speaker-phone, I'm going to have to put my foot down. I have my office door shut and I can still hear every word she's shouting at the phone.
This morning, I'm sitting here and suddenly there's someone pounding on the door. I mean, Keyless Joe moved out a month ago, right? Whointheheck else would show up before 8:00 and start pounding when no one answers their first knock in five seconds?
In my usual passive-aggressive fashion, I sat here for 30 seconds, letting them pound, while I sipped coffee and thought hard thoughts about the lack of manners and decorum that characterize our society today.
Turns out it was Alvin, stopping by to drop stuff off. I gave him hell.
I'm not at my best today, sorry. PMS.
I need coffee. Starbucks...I'm coming your way in a few minutes.
A burst of manic energy last night got the rest of the dribs and drabs of stuff I've written keyed into the story file. For anyone keeping score, we're over 37k words and 85 pages. Mostly dull.
There have been moments...when I forget "the story" per se and just write, when some good stuff has happened. But not many of them.
A Kind Friend has been giving me advice. Not about the story, but about getting in my own way when I'm trying to write.
It's all quite valid but I live here with me, you know? I've haven't figured out any way to kick me out, even temporarily, so that I can get something done without me standing on the sidelines, criticizing. I used to have the knack...I'd just go into the Zone, the Writing Zone, where I couldn't hear me nitpicking. By the time I started listening to me, the story was done and I was pretty much indifferent to what anyone thought of it, even if it was me.
Anyhow, with the assistance of said Kind Friend, I'm fumbling my way back toward the Zone. Last night I picked up a piece of paper and scribbled down a stupid but very amusing scene. Has nothing to do with The Story but it will make a nice interlude. For two minutes, I wasn't in my own way.
She will, of course, be made to pay for helping me. At any moment I may start sending her bits and pieces of scenes and demanding to know her response to them. "What about this? What do you think this means? Do you understand what's happening here? Who does this tell you the character is? How do you think he's feeling about this?"
It's a lot of work, being my friend.
If I showed up at my door and asked me if I wanted to be friends, I'd probably tell me I'd moved.
She's a good friend though. In response to a casual inquiry on her part about how I got to be so weird (well, she didn't quite phrase it that way), I sent her a three-page essay about my feet. She was very nice about it.
Well, I'd better go do some work. No writing on company time today.
Later: Arrrgh! Buehler just called. He got back to town earlier and he'll be in for a while this afternoon. I haven't done much work so far today. I've got to buckle down!
Yesterday I had the day off. That made three days in a row.
Total for the three days, I wrote 37 words on my story. Hooray!
Not.
I spent most of my day off yesterday immersed in an OaT marathon. I started at the beginning and plowed my way through episode after episode. I learned two important things during the course of this marathon.
#1 The show is very slashy.
#2 I have no idea how I managed to pin down the characters enough to write them in the past. (I know, I keep saying this. But I'm amazed anew each time I go back to the source material and realize how inadequate it is.)
The more I watch, the more it's forced upon my attention that of all the things the people making the show cared about, the actual characters were what they cared least about.
The villains, the minor characters passing across the stage briefly, even some secondary "recurring" characters reveal interesting flashes of layered personalities. As the show goes on, the "main" characters become less and less interesting in terms of "development." They're...just something to hang some exposition and a plot resolution on.
Drives me bonkers.
I mean, I can write the story, in terms of writing down the this is what happens and then this happens next sense, but the people doing these things are just...no one in particular. They're not actually Victor and Mac.
I'm torn between just writing down the this is what happens stuff and going back to fix it all later and the lurking knowledge that never in my life have I "fixed" anything but a few typos after completing a first draft.
I even performed the Ultimate Rite of Desperation. I actually went back and read the previous (longer) OaT story I posted. I've never sunk to that level before. I mean, how dumb is it to go back to your own stuff in preference to the source material?
Didn't do much good, in any case. The story didn't suck as much as I'd feared, but I can tell that those two guys are Mac and Victor in a way the guys in my current story just aren't. I suspect this is what I get for having tried to force all of that "real writing" structure and content junk on myself.
A complete re-write is the only solution, but I'm trying to avoid thinking about that. It's a long time until next weekend, which is the next chance I'll have to do any writing.
So.
Another beautiful Colorado day sucked down into the black hole of the SEN. I didn't get any reading done. Didn't get anyone's blog/journal read. Didn't get much housecleaning done. Didn't go for a walk, make it to the grocery store, or get any of those boxes taken to the storage unit.
On the other hand, I feel cute today.
That's mostly because I went underwear shopping on Saturday and today I'm wearing cute new lingerie. Not that it's any of yer beezwax what I have on under my clothes, but still. I have new leopardskin-pattern lingerie and you don't. Nyah.
After a massive struggle between my mouth and my diet, I've managed to get back down to the weight I originally achieved two weeks ago. I really do need to stop rewarding myself for doing well on my diet with something besides food.
For instance, today I rewarded myself for a good weigh-in with Japanese food for lunch. Granted, we're talking mostly chicken and brown rice, but it's still not the 2 oz of grilled chicken and half a cup of vegetables I should be lunching on.
There are things those of you who live at or near sea level never have to think about. Pressure differentials, for instance. When you live in the Mile High City, you have to pay attention to pressure differentials. If you grab a little plastic packet of soy sauce to put on your Japanese take-out, it's vital to remember it was packed at a higher pressure. You open it with great care, lest the under-pressure contents wind up sprayed across your monitor instead of your rice.
That wasn't interesting, but it did help to pad out this entry.
(Later note: I didn't eat it all, though. A gal with brand-new leopardskin lingerie on is conscious of her butt.)
(Also, a gal stewing furiously over the iniquity of television writers and producers who introduce great concepts then waste them on crappy execution is aware of the knots in her stomach.)
Posted by AnneZook at 01:35 PMBuehler and I share an office, okay? It's not a huge office. It's big enough for the two of us because he travels a lot.
The point is that when someone walks to the door and sees that one of us is on the phone, what drives them to start hearty, loud-voiced conversations with the other one? Are they under the impression that someone sitting eight feet away is magically protected from the painful echoes of their voice bouncing off two glass walls?
I have no object to the quiet hello. Speaking in a reasonable tone of voice is perfectly acceptable. We can't each be expected to stop working just because the other is on the phone. But a little consideration, is that too much to ask? Maybe it is. The art of lowering one's voice discreetly when necessary seem to be a lost one.
Bossyboots does it. The Tweenybopper does it. And now the new guy, Stretch, he's doing it. He walked to the door. Buehler is on the phone. I'm looking at my computer, typing. "Good morning!" he booms.
Pisses me off. Pisses me off that I'm always having to shush people and they treat me like I'm being rude.
Yesterday I got up and left at 4:15. It was that ghastly of a day.
Today I came in at 8:00 and by 8:12 I was already kind of sorry. Wednesday, as I did a demo of the latest release of the software for a potential user, I ran into multiple bugs. I complained, they fixed them, and they introduced a lot of additional bugs. Since we have a Major Presentation today to, among others, the people paying us to develop and roll out this software, a certain amount of chaos ensued. That's what went wrong with yesterday, BTW. This morning when I got here, my e-mail just kept loading mail sent yesterday evening...last night...early this morning.
I like to think of developers working all night to fix the stuff they shouldn't have let get past them in the first place, okay?
I'm going to get some coffee. And there had better be at least one piece of pumpkin bread left at Starbucks or someone is going to get hurt.
(Note: The first sip tasted like Mulderanskinner again. So interesting.)
The List...that oh-so-amazing List of Potential Readers continues to expand. Four!
I'm a touch dubious about the last two...they're personal friends who no doubt feel obligated to read anything I write*, but it's still nice to see them willing to stand up semi-publicly and take the pledge.
(*Or, you know, not. I love them dearly but they know I haven't read anything for years, so no doubt they've written stuff I haven't read and didn't feel "obligated" to read. Possibly the reverse could be true. Possibly my constant nattering about the SEN gives the impression I'm desperate for readers. I'm not. I'm desperate for a minor but telling plot development on Day 5.)
I'm just saying. No obligation, just because you know me. You couldn'tpay me to read my stuff so it would be silly to say I expect anyone else to.
Since we last met, I've written 3,000 words on the subject of me (long story, short entry) but not much on the story.
It could always happen today...Buehler will be out of the office almost continuously for the next four weeks...but I have actual intentions of working. I can't abide the kind of person who works only because someone is monitoring them. I actually tend to do more work when I'm unsupervised.
For instance, Buehler has been in the office all week this week (until today) and I just checked my voice-mail and realized I haven't checked it since last Friday. I had ten voicemail messages, five of them being increasingly frantic calls from one client.
Or, maybe the phone system ate the messages for three days. That's my excuse to the client, anyhow. (It could happen.)
Anyhow, realizing I had all of this work stacked up, I decided the wise thing to do was to walk over for coffee.
They're renovating the building elevators. New carpet today. It's covered with shrink-wrap of some kind. Not bubble wrap, but sticky so that it clings to the carpet. On the way back up to the office just now, I danced on it to make the trapped air bubbles pop.
If there are cameras in the elevator, I'll probably be locked up by the end of the day.
Also...Buehler is here. Seems I made a mistake about his "leaving" date. So...work.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:35 AMAs I was telling someone in e-mail yesterday (most of my blog entries start out as an idle thought I post into an e-mail), I walked over to get a Starbucks Latte in the morning. (Well, that's not surprising. I do most mornings.)
And, as I was strolling back toward the office, I took a sip and discovered that the first sip of a latte tastes, in some inexplicable fashion, just like writing.
It tastes like fanfiction, to be precise. Silky. Creamy. Warmth blossoming into heat. A suggestion of bitter complexity tinting the velvet milk.
Also, I drink a lot of lattes, so naturally the taste reminds me of all those mornings I spent writing instead of working. (X-Files. A latte tastes like writing the X-Files. How remarkable.)
I'm just saying. Nothing much has happened since yesterday.
I'm at a loss for anything to blog about today.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)Another sucker Potential Reader of the SEN has painted a bulls-eye on her forehead!
That's two, count 'em, two possible readers and the story's not even done yet, you know. That's pretty impressive. I could well break my record of six feedbacks* on this story if I buckle down.
I'm feeling all motivated and stuff, now, in case you can't tell.
(*We can only hope. Because I didn't approve of that story and I'd be happy to see it knocked out of first place.)
Also, the Big Decision has been made.
Plot-schmot. What this story needs is to be the kind of story where someone gets ditched because the other someone got an offer for a good taco.
I've been fighting it for two weeks but I'm surrendering now. The nuanced, red-herring case details are out. The porn flick is back in.
You gotta write what you know. I know nothing about psychotic serial killers, but random weirdness...that I can relate to.
Tortuous intrigue? Outside my competence.
Non-Euclidian babbling? Bring it on. (Never you mind, I know what I mean.) (Ed.: That's good. No one else followed it. Plus which, I suspect "Euclidian" doesn't mean what you think it does and you spelled it wrong.)
No one wants to read me trying to be impressively literary. Or to read a story that looks as it if was constructed using a how-to manual. Least of all me. And, even less than I want to read something like that do I want to write something like that.
But don't run away with the idea that the experiment was a failure. For those curious...or bored enough to be still reading by this point, I'd like to say that it was a roaring success.
I learned an enormous amount about the kind of work it takes to put together what I think of as a "real" story. (Especially when the putting is being done by someone who doesn't have any aptitude for the task.) And I reaffirmed the fact that I'm not really one of your buckle-down-and-get-to-it kind of writers. No nose attached to my face remains long in the vicinity of a grindstone. (At witnessed by the fact that I spent most of today writing personal e-mails and now I'm writing the days' second blog entry.)
Such pressure. Two potential readers! I feel like I should put on clean socks and comb my hair. Maybe make a few finger sandwiches.
Now I have nothing left to fear but the possibility that one of The Readers is related to or fond of a Shriner.
Expect me to make much of this in future posts.
Until then, let's all have a moment of silence for the approximately 40 pages worth of material I'll be burning in a cleansing ceremony later this evening.
(It's possible I'm a touch manic-depressive. If so, I have to say I do enjoy going into these manic states.)
Posted by AnneZook at 03:09 PMAs I've been whining to various people in e-mail this morning, now that I've prohibited myself from (political) blogging or writing while I'm at work, there's really no reason for me to keep showing up so early every day. I'm going to stop coming in at 7:15. because all that means is that I'm completely bored with work by 8:00 in the morning.
By the time everyone else starts to roll in, around 9:00, I'm already considering what I brought for lunch. Not because I'm hungry. Just for something to do.
One dear friend suggested via e-mail that I work topless to spice things up. I don't think she quite gets the point. It's me who needs entertained. I don't find the idea of me topless very interesting.
We had a bit of excitement around here yesterday, though.
It was around Brother Darryl, who has, as I believe I mentioned, finally given official notice and is planning to leave this vale o'tears for employment...elsewhere. I've never blamed him...he should have bailed years ago. Bernie, his boss, is a lot of things, but a kind, considerate, highly ethical employer he is not.
So, Brother Darryl had finally had enough. His story was that his family had some kind of work he could do until he found another job.
Then...all was revealed, through the mysterious agency of e-mail.
Owing to an error on the part of a client (clients are always doing stupid things, you know), an e-mail was sent yesterday that should not have been sent until today. As a result of that blunder, it was discovered that Brother Darryl, that sweet, sensitive, long-suffering guy, was planning to walk out of here with a pocketful of Bernie's customers and the software code for one of their products.
I mean, that's just wrong, okay? Unethical. Not to mention criminal.
We had quite the flurry of Official Bodies here yesterday. Some guy from the state equivalent of the FBI, some guy from some employment oversight agency, official interviews, hushed voices, closed doors.
All very shocking.
I'm a bit puzzled as to the outcome of the entire thing, though. I mean, after the Official Bodies left, Brother Darryl was still here. I saw him helping the network person who was beefing up our security as a direct result of the discovery that Brother Darryl had downloaded aforementioned code from our server.
I don't quite get that. I can't wait for Buehler to get here today so I can get the rest of the story.
In other news, I wrote about 600 really boring words last night, thought of three really funny scenes I could have written if the SEN wasn't turning out to be such an unfunny story, and stared at my index cards again.
It's not that I couldn't have written more. It's just that if I'm not letting the guys banter around and sneak lustful peeks at each other every ten seconds, the writing isn't as much fun. I could sit there and string words together all evening long, but what would be the point?
I also realized that my laboriously conceived and outlined plot is ridiculous. No criminals in the world could be this inept. So now I have to go away and think about it all again.
Eventually I gave it up and read P. G. Wodehouse for three hours. That's a much better way to spend an evening.
(Note: Brother Darryl wasn't working when I saw him yesterday. He was assisting, willingly or not, in the stripping of all company information off his PC. To be used in evidence against him, if necessary, although I'm told Bernie isn't planning to file charges.)
Note 1: Nyah, nyah to those of you predicting bad weather for this weekend. It was glorious.
Note 2: Apparently it was glorious across the entire country this weekend. Apart from a burst of chat on one list, I think I got a total of fourteen e-mails this weekend, and ten of those were spam.
Note 3: Shopping! The stores are finally starting to have a few things I like. It's been a bitter struggle since the diet. I had to get rid of 80% of my wardrobe and I've been searching desperately for replacement items for the last ten months. I haven't been lucky with blouses or shirts yet, but should the weather decide to take a turn for the chilly, I'm good for sweaters.
Note 4: Yes, I did in fact spend another glorious, sunny Sunday writing. Due to various bursts of scribbling one or two evenings last week, as well as Sunday morning's usual hours-long stint, I had 37 pages of debris to key in yesterday.
Note 5: I really hate transcribing.
Note 6: On the other hand, I usually take advantage of the opportunity to do a bit of judicious editing (and pruning) when I have to key stuff in, which is all to the good for The Reader. Especially the pruning. The less of me the better, I always think.
Note 7: I didn't find much to prune or edit yesterday. It worries me when the first draft is so bland that there's no obvious idea for how to pep it up.
Note 8: I'm staying firm with my plan, though. I'm shoving the story down on paper, regardless. The theory is that if I have a solid grasp of the story structure and write to that structure, I should be able to fix any little deficiencies later.
Note 9: It's just a theory. There's a distinct possibility that it's not a reliable one.
Note 10: I lined all my color-coded index cards up, one after the other, on the floor yesterday and stared them. In the end, I decided that the original idea, that slashy bits should be used to cover any deficiencies or tedium in the case under investigation, was a wise one. I removed three cards marking character and/or plot development for the case and replaced them with four cards marking developments of the slash story. More sex, that's what I decided The Reader wants. Not the description of hours spent with bad guys.
Note 11: The key to writing a convincing "bad guy" character is to remember that everyone is the hero of their own story. I think my bad guys are one-dimensional because I forgot that. One of the main things I have to do in the Grand Edit is round them out a trifle.
Note 12: My writing, at least in this story, has all the characteristic earmarks of the enthusiastic but talentless amateur. The similes are banal, clichés appear on almost every page, the characters are generally lifeless, and the plot is far too linear, pushing on toward the last page with a relentless pace that even I, the Fond Author, find a bit mind-numbing to trace. However, I glance at Note 8 and remind myself that it's all part of the plan.
Note 13: It's important at this point to repeat something we covered in an earlier entry. It doesn't really matter if this story winds up "for the public" or not. I still maintain that no story that allows you to spend hours and hours messing around with color-coded index cards, pens, and post-it notes can be counted entirely as a waste of time. Even if I wind up tossing the story in the trash, it has to be said that I've had a lot of fun planning it.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:02 PMThat's what I'm infected with. No sooner had I announced that it was out of the question for me to write, than I wrote 500 +/- words while I was waiting on hold for someone. My brain seems to do the opposite of whatever I tell it some days.
I gotta have one of those conversations with BossyBoots. Bleah. I have to tell him that if he takes exception to someone thinking he said something, he can't document his protest in the call management software. As I've told him forty-nine times, that software is our back-up to prove the work we're doing on this contract, in case the client or the FDA decides to audit us. This is not the place for him to make whiny.
I went back there to deal with it a couple of minutes ago but he was sitting there on the phone, munching his gums and looking stupid.
I'm in kind of a bad mood.
The next day....
That appears to be all I had to say yesterday.
In spite of this morning's 7:00 conference call and the gross, gray rain, I'm in a better mood today. Possibly that's because I ate like a pig yesterday evening. Sue me. I'm happier and you can't take that away from me. No day can be a complete waste if it entails the wearing of zippy-leg pants!
To: The First Floor 'Ho
If you're over fifty with the wrinkles of a seventy year-old, you dye your hair turquoise, and you slam your 50-inch butt into a pair of raggedy size 14 jeans, you're going to look like a skanky 'ho. It's a given, okay?
Maybe you are a skanky 'ho and don't mind advertising the fact, I don’t know, but walking around with a chip on your shoulder about looking skanky doesn't add to your social appeal, so don't give me hateful looks for doing a double-take.
You knew you looked like a freak when you left home this morning. Do you honestly expect me to believe you're wearing turquoise spiked hair because you don't want to attract attention?
You express your individuality by looking like a reject for a Bride of Frankenstein casting call.
I express mine by being disconcerted to find you in my office building.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:52 PM