yourwords

Lately I’ve been stuck in fan fiction writing. I haven’t worked on my aliens novel or my ‘romance’ novel.

Am I just lazy? Is it writer’s block? No, its’ the fan fiction. It sucked me in good and tight, again. See I started writing a Harry Potter fanfiction in 2004 when I read the books for the first time. The books were so good, I loved the vasst quantity of characters and possibilites, that it sparked an inevitable creativity in me, and so I started my first official fan fiction. Which was supposed to be a short story, something fun between a made up ravenclaw student and draco malfoy. Really, it wasn’t supposed to go anywhere, but go it did. 447 pages later, I had a full novel on my hands, and immediately began on a sequel. In the sequel, Draco and Lucius kidnap my made up ravenclaw. Unfortunately the sequel didn’t make it very far, because she was just stuck in the malfoy manor for a whole year. I know what happens the entire way, but I lost interest in writing it after about 47 pages.

Then I began on the third in the series…. lol. The series that was only supposed to be a fun side project. Once again, the third one was begun because I felt like writing a bit, having some fun with Voldemort and death eaters. Once again, in the spirit of the first book, I have been swept away by it and I can’t stop!

Even if I could stop, I wouldn’t want to. My only regret is that I have much more fun writing this fan fiction than I ever have writing my real books. :( How I rationalize that to my brain is by saying “writing a fan fiction, where you can play with someone else’s characters, is a very good creative exercise.” Which I find to be true, to an extent. I explore my descriptions better, I make more daring leaps with plots and characters. However, in the end, I am only giving myself an excuse to do what I want.

My dumb romance novel is going smoothly. I can tell, because I’m not even anxious to get to the hot boys at the lake. I’m good right now with character development … and all that… yeah my eyes glazed over too right there.

In my pursuit of spirituality I joined Soul Pancake. They discuss important shit and I want to be there when they do. I don’t have much to say myself on there in the way of profound questions, but I can read other people’s and make smart ass remarks. Halfway, I’m interested in the philosophy, and halfway I laugh at how serious the fellow soulpancakers take themselves. It’s just a question. Not an essay assigned by God.

Or maybe it is an essay assigned by God. Maybe Rainn Wilson is God.

I refuse to let my book fizzle out. Again. I’ve been trying to write this book since 2002, and it’s going to f-ing get written. Nothing is going to stop me this time. Not writer’s block, not a new book itching to be written, and definetly not plain laziness. Hear that, writing gods? I will not be squashed this time!

Here are my plans…. muahahaha!

Plan A

My book is about an Anthropology of Religion student, who is obsessed with debunking catholicism. So, since I’ve never been a catholic, and only went to one or two masses, I need to do some research. The passt few days I’ve been hitting the library and going through different books about catholicism. No serious research yet, but I think it’s progress. Knowing more about catholicism will help me write the character. She grew up Catholic, and hates everything to do with it. She’s not growing from love, let us say. And in order to debunk catholicism, this girl is digging up all she can on the origins and history of Peter’s Church.

Plan A.2

The next thing that’s going to happen in the book is she’s mixing aliens with catholicism. This means that I need to research aliens further. Over the course of my life, I’ve had bouts of curiosity about aliens and UFOs. When I say curiosity, I mean a burning desire to know more. And so I have accumulated quite a few books on the subject, and I watch documentaries from time to time. But in order to get the book written well, I want my head wrapped around aliens like my legs would be around Robert Pattinson. ;) More library time.

Plan B

I’m going to try something that I’ve rejected as tool for these ten long years of my writing career- writing the end first. What a concept! I hate it when people skip to the end before they read the book, it’s such a cheat. And in the same realm, I never wanted to know EXACTLY what would happen at the end of a book I was writing till I got there. I like to keep myself as interested and curious as possible. Well that might have worked for those crap books I wrote in junior hish and highschool, but I don’t have the kind of time and patience I had in those days.

Besides, my last bought of writer’s block was defeated by me skipping ahead a few chapters and working backwards. Suppose it works the same when I skip to the end of the book, and have to figure out what’s happened up until then.

Wish me luck!

My life is not hard right now. Not by a long shot. I hate saying that, because as a writer I feel like I should live in constant iniquity. So, usually I make things out to be harder than they are, to give me something to whine about.

In just such an attempt, I have a story about eating alone. Today I went to California Pizza Kitchen all by myself, in the interest of cheating on my diet with the very food I constantly crave. But it was so sad, I looked down at my hands when I told the host that I was a party of one. Even sadder wen he sat me down at a booth built for four. It swallowed me up in emptiness.

If I had been smart with this, rather than noble, I could have brought something productive to do. Like, heaven forbid, my book so I could get some writing done. But no, I thought to myself it’s bad enough that I’m eating by myself, and drinking by myself, I will not sit there with my nose down and buried in a notebook. Suck mistakes made in the face of pride. The outcome was my extreme discomfort and boredom.

With no one to share my meal with, I called someone I shouldn’t have. It’s funny the people you consider talking to when you’re alone. A guy I swore never to speak with again suddenly became a very viable meal companion. For some backstory; he’s my ex boyfriend. I never should have dated him in the first place. It was a lonely, unthoughtout attempt to change my situation.

In the end, I found I regretted many many more unthoughtout ‘decisions’ or lack of, throughout our short relationship.

When it was all said and done, I realized that I never wanted him, not even as a friend. And so I decided, in pride, that I would never see him again. It only made sense, since I didn’t have any desire to.

Then, all alone, sipping on a strawberry margarita, I pulled out my cell phone and got the ex to come visit me at the California Pizza Kitchen. Dumb Dumb Dumb move. It reminded me of why I never particularilly liked his company.

People do the dumbest things when afraid. I was scared of being pitied. In that fear, I struck out desperately to fix what I thought to be a monumental problem. Instead, I initiated a far bigger problem for myself, by opening a door that I spent all these months closing. One thing I can say about my ex is that he teaches me a lot about mistakes, and what to learn from them.

Sometimes its easy to forget that different types of people exist all over the world. When I get so caught up in my own shit, I lose track of the bigger picture. That this isn’t how things are going to be forever, and most certainly there are people out there who have their own shit to deal with, completely seperate than my own.

This isn’t one of those “never complain about your problems, because 90% of the world has it a lot worse than you” Which, sure, I guess is true and important to figure in to things, but I’d rather spread out experiences onto a horizontal surface rather than all being on the wheel of fortune- some on top, some on bottom. Or like we’re all climbing a mountain. No, to me what’s most interesting about remembering that other people live differently than myself is an exciting revelation. When I get too engrossed and bogged down with how much MY life sucks, all I have to do is to stop for a second, and look around me. Everyone that walks by is in a world entirely seperate from mine. By observing them, in the most non stalker way possible, I get a glimpse into what it’s like to live in their world. When I return to my world, things seem a whole lot easier to handle.

I can also immagine how those people would react to my world. By visualizing different scenarios, and comparing them to my own take, I expand the possibilites. With the numerous outcomes I could have, things seem less claustrophobic.

Or I just turn on the TV and watch sitcoms till my eyes glaze over. Either way works. :P

 So in my job hunt uselessness, I took it upon myself to at least attempt at something useful, and I researched Catholicism.

Yeah, that went about as well as it sounds.

The only book at the library that I could get into was a non-fiction called Papal Magic. It’s all about occultism in Catholicism. For the most part, it talks about individual priests in the church’s past who have been found guilty of participating in “Black Mass” where all the prayers and ceremonies of a normal mass are flipped into something .. evil.

Interesting stuff. What helped a lot was it was written like a real book, not like a text book or a newspaper. The other books had interesting topics too, like arguments for and against Jesus’ existance. But I got bored. It was written by two professors, and they wrote their book for fellow professors, not for johnny Q public. Sad sad. I’d like to finish that book someday, it’ll help a lot in my book.

In the flash from the mask
You are alone in your lie
With the flesh shining back
There is no disguise
Only eyes appear
Too large in fair light
You have no escape
The eyes cannot die

Is anything real?
What can I trust?

-Paige Law

Lots has been said about children and how to get them to sleep, how to increase fertility, how to adopt, how to punish, or I suppose how to ‘correct’. One thing that I don’t think is talked about enough is the option not to have children. Is it right for everyone? No not really. And the religious and moral overtones that come along with abortion hurt young woman who get pregnant and feel obligation to ruin their lives.

This is a sensitive subject, I know it better than anyone believe me. Personally in my heart I know that the only thing that matters in life is free will. It is the choice of the individual, because only the individual has to live with the outcome. Children are a big decision. It’s unfortunate that not all children can be planned. The life that goes into it, the dedication, it needs to be thought out. I’ve had plenty of time to think about it. And with all the nieces and nephews I have, I think I know almost for certain, that I don’t want children.

Children are a blessing, it’s true, especially to those who WANT them. I’ve said this before, many times actually, but I dont think people should make me feel guilty because of that. How many more people in the world to we really need? Let me live my ‘miserable’ life, without children, and probably a few more cats than is considered normal.

But, hey, if Russel Crowe comes along and wants to make me Paige Crowe, with babies to come, I will not say no.   

Prompt:

Everyone is bothered by something. When two people meet who have different morals and ideas, they don’t always butt heads, some people can see eye to eye, especially on things they don’t feel strongly about. What do you feel strongly about, that you would not relinquish?

For me, obviously, it’s pressure. Putting pressure on people to do what they don’t want to do. Like having kids.

Tomorrow I leave!

Long road trip of doom and peril… I think I’ll enjoy it. I’ve always liked road trips, all that time to sit and do basically nothing. Hey, it’ll give me lots of time to read and write, and catch up on my favorite kids movies. Because I’ll be most of the time squashed between two child seats, with the dvd player in my face, probably with kung fu panda or madagascar showcasing. But it will be nice to have the trip, because when I come back, I will be thrown into work, no exceptions, no breaks, and certainly no sanity. I wont even get paid for te first month, it’s a ‘free labor’ internship.

Not looking forward to that as much. people ask me if I’m excited to enter this ‘new chapter in my life’ and I’m like… what new chapter? I have to wake up too early, get dressed, go pretend that it doesn’t bother me to play nice with an idiot bossing me around, and get nothing from it for a while. Hell, I’ve been doing that my whole life. This isn’t even a prologue, or a dress rehersal. Just same ol same ol. Leaving one hellacious pit of despair for another. So no, I’m not excited.

What I am excited about is getting back into a REAL school. This fall I’m going back to community college, and taking the classes that I want to take rather than ones I have to. See, if I’m a full time student, I get insurance through my step dad’s work. Win win situation. It’s not like it’s been a decade since I’ve been in real school, as opposed to vocational school. Only about a year. And yet I miss it like a phantom limb.

Yeah, today apparently I’m extra dramatic. Maybe I always was, and only became aware of it today. :) Writer’s syndrome.

Prompt:

Sometimes the best thing for reducing stress is to take the time to identify it. I’m not saying writers are the least stressed people you ever met, in fact probably not. What I mean is that daily journal writing can clear your head, by at least identifying some of the issues cluttering your brain. Like the scientific method, a question (or problem) must be stated before one can solve it.

So I put forth that whoever reads this should start a daily PERSONAL journal. Blogs are good too, but you don’t write down everything in a blog. Not the things you’re keeping to yourself, and those are probably the things you’ll need to write about most.