nanowrimotivation
a fellow nanowrimo participant recently complained of a lack of motivation in the month of december. after much musing, i slapped out the following, which i have yet to send out to the group and probably won't. but it was intended for somewhat public consumption, so i'll put it here. maybe some of them will stumble across it. then again, maybe not.

Our beloved National Novel Writing Month takes a lot out of us. Those of us who reach or exceed the mark are elated to have ?won,? although the finished product may be suspect. We are also exhausted. Even those of us who do this often. Because it is a race we?re not used to running, despite the conditioning of the writing we do during the rest of the year. Those who don?t finish are also exhausted from the effort, and likely, they are exhausted from whatever it was that kept them from finishing. They might then get a little bummed about writing. This is probably normal. The point being, there isn?t a whole lot of writing going on in December.

I can?t stop writing. Not even when I need to hit the brakes. I back off for a day or two, and then my muse shakes off his drunken slumber, rubs his bleary eyes and mumbles incoherently in my ear until I begin writing again. My muse is a pain in the ass, and if I knew what was good for me, I?d kick him to the curb and leave him there. But I love him. I?d miss him if he ever did leave, so I humor him and starting slogging words across a page or screen to see what he?s mumbling about.

This month, he?s mumbled quite a bit about a kid named Duncan Kyle and Duncan?s brother, Jake. Duncan and Jake have both been part of the series of science fiction novels I?ve written that started with my 2002 NaNoWriMo entry, Shaman. Duncan and Jake have their own story to tell, one I?ve tried to tell for four years. Duncan was originally conceived as a character for the role playing game Changeling. The game lasted two sessions, but Duncan wasn?t done. Jake became a hell of a lot more interesting when something I had intended as a shadowy killer with no real personality took me by surprise in one writing session. He began to mock Talon as they fought, and I realized there was a lot more about Jake that I had yet to learn.

Besides Duncan and Jake, there are five stories about a private investigator named Hayden Knight and an investigative reporter named Conrad Satan (pronounced Sha-tan), one of which I started in October but can?t quite get back to. In that story, the last scene I wrote was so bad, I recently went in and deleted it after a read through. Still, I haven?t found the desire to move forward with it, partly because the story got away from me at some point. Well, Conrad got away from me at one point and is likely to start doing foolish things, and Hayden, having been hypnotized, is having a hard time overcoming the hypnotic suggestion, which he knows damn well is a lie.

In order to get around that, I?ve decided to let Conrad do what he will. I can?t stop him. He?s hardheaded and maybe a little crazy. Besides, some of the later stories deal with his mental breakdown. If I let him go now, I?m setting things up for later. To get Hayden to snap out of it, I?ve decided a little research on hypnotism is in order. Research, I?ve found, is a fantastic motivator. You might not find what you set out looking for, but chances are you will run across something that you find interesting. Hop over to your favorite search engine and look for something that interests you. It doesn?t have to be something that pertains to your writing. Maybe you don?t have anything to write about. Type a random thing into your search engine and see what happens. I?ve found fun things this way. In fact, it gave me fuel for two short stories I wrote after NaNoWriMo, ?Cucumber? and ?Indian Summer Halloween.?

I got the title ?Indian Summer Halloween? stuck in my head after that stretch of warm weather we had in late October. I researched Halloween and found a two-line entry about Carlin, supposedly the spirit of Samhain. I never found more about Carlin and thus decided to use her as I pleased. I also found the story of Jack O?Lantern, a farmer who tricked the devil and for his trouble, could go to neither heaven nor hell and walked around with his soul in a hollowed out turnip. ?Cucumber? tells the story of how Jack O?Lantern got tricked into hiding in a hollowed out cucumber by his newborn son. I?d never written a fairy tale before. It was fun to write, and I think it turned out rather well. ?Indian Summer Halloween? is about Jack Jr.?s search for his ?sister,? Carlin, who has run away.

Also on the many back burners I?ve been juggling are a story about samurai in some kind of fantasy setting and a story called ?Sons of Dead Fathers,? which stems from a panel discussion at Dragon*Con 2003 that I attempted to derail with the suggestion of ?kill the love interest.? I made two false starts at this story because I had forgotten the story and was looking at ideas instead. That?s no way to write. At least not for me. So I decided that I would give my main character a love interest. Most importantly, I would kill her during the course of the story. This thought, that I will put this boy through that kind of pain and suffering, is motivation enough for me. I cackle madly and rub my hands together like some kind of evil mastermind. I love my characters, and I love to hurt them. I?ll let them win if the story goes that way. I don?t force them to do what I want. I merely unload misery and see how they react.

For me, that?s what keeps me writing. How do these people I write about deal with things? How do they react to love? To losing loved ones? To physical pain? What do they do to cope? My detective, Hayden Knight, has lost a lot of friends, has lost his daughter, yet he is an absolute rock. Even though he won?t get rid of the bottle of bourbon he keeps in his desk drawer. In this year?s NaNo novel, I did horrible things to one of my main characters, mostly in the way of physical pain and unwelcome sexual contact. How did he respond? During a fight, he professes to the psychotic assassin who has been hounding him that he likes pain. So of course, I gave him more. I love doing that kind of thing. I love all my characters; their faults, their strengths, their hang-ups, their vices and their virtues. Character and dialogue are the things I think I do well in writing, so I do everything from that standpoint. Plot? Whatever. The characters tell me how they want to proceed, and that?s what we do. Morals? Don?t go there. Theme? Only by accident. It?s like having voices in my head but being able to listen and respond without psychotropic medication.

But let?s face it. Sometimes it just doesn?t work. Either you stare at your screen or the paper for hours and nothing happens, or you write, and it feels like the most painful dental experience you?ve ever had. Your muse has shacked up with some little hottie. Your characters are sick of you beating them about the head and won?t come out to play. You?ve got research material galore, but you just don?t seem to care. So what do you do when you hit this icy patch on the road of noveling endeavors?

Some people will tell you to stop until you feel ready to write again. This works to an extent, but what if you never feel ready again? Some people say write through it, but writing through it can make you feel worse because you?ll think everything you put down is crap. And it might be. Of course, if you honestly believe that everything you write is brilliant, there?s a whole different problem. Fact is, we all write crap every once in a while. Some of us are only capable of crap. That?s okay. We write because we love what we do. The second you feel you don?t love it, stop. Loving the craft itself will get you through any block you face, in whatever manner you face it.

Personally, I write through blocks. Though I will stay away from whatever story I?m working on. I write journal entries, store lists, wish lists, character sketches, dreams, anything but the story that?s got me tied up. Eventually, my mind will wander back to the story. I?ll wonder what my people are up to. I?ll wonder what state I left them in. Then I?ll read over what I?ve done, discover that they are taking tango lessons in Kentucky and my muse will say, ?Hey, what if we did this?? And before I know it, I?m moving right along.

While writing through a block is my preference, it sometimes does leave me with that hopeless, helpless sense of doom, that ?I?ll never be published because I suck? pit of self doubt and self pity that can suck away any writer?s will to write. When that happens, I stop. However, I don?t stop being creative. I won?t, for example, drown my writing woes in hours of pointless television. Unless there?s hockey on. What I will do is read. It seems to me that some writers forget to read. Some things I?ve seen come across as if the writer didn?t realize that people read. This is why we write, though. Most of us probably were reading before we were writing. We probably read something and had that beautiful epiphany of ?THIS is what I want to do!? Read a book. Read a magazine. Hell, read the back of the shampoo bottle while you?re in the shower! Either you?ll be inspired by great craft, or you?ll find something so bad that you know you can do better, even at your worst.

Having nothing to read, I?ll find other creative things to do. One of my biggest time wasters is Photoshop, but it also keeps me in a creative frame of mind. I can?t draw. Stick figures elude me, but with Photoshop, I don?t have to be able to draw. I can do some nifty things with Photoshop. Most importantly, I can refresh my writing batteries.

I will also refinish furniture. There?s a wealth of old stuff in my house, hand-me-downs from parents when my husband and I first moved in together. While it?s easier to toss it and buy new stuff, I?ve gotten quite good at sanding off old nasty stains, tightening up wobbly table legs and putting on a fresh stain. It?s a very Zen activity. I don?t find my mind wandering. I can be outside in fresh air and sunshine. The physical motion of sanding and painting, while not requiring much concentration, seems to induce a trance-like meditative state. When I?m done, my mind is clear, and I have a ?new? table.

Whatever you do, do something creative to work through blocks. Blocks are as important as writing. You must heed them. They are telling you that your creative brain is tired. Give it a rest, but don?t let it atrophy. My muse, for all his drinking, is a hungry little bastard, and I must feed him. Writing is play. We didn?t always play the same thing when we were kids. Sometimes it was tag. Sometimes cops and robbers. And sometimes we just stayed inside and colored in our coloring books.

It?s also important to keep in mind that blocks are temporary. Just as the month of November comes to an end, so will any block you face. Some of us may have doubted that we would make it to the end of November. But we did.

twas the night before new years ...
... and all through my house, we watched hockey, football and went to bed early. no fireworks.
'net is all fixed now so i am free to waste as many hours playing around here as i want and don't have to pick through the dust and ashes in my brain for passwords to sites i usually login automatically, like updating this. imagine my surprise when i did the email thing to get the password and it was something so obvious that i shouldn't have forgotten it. doh!
too tired to hit the bottle because work sucked away my will to live. month end is always bad but when it's year end, too, it's four times as bad. but the work will still be there friday. had serious thoughts of not going back to work and writing full time and actually attempting to get published. then i got over that. even if i thought i was a good writer, i haven't got that kind of ambition. my passion is the craft of words and characters, not a spot on a bestseller list, which only means books are getting bought, not that they're getting read or that they're any good. i guess that's why i don't mind putting my stuff on the internet. maybe i'll attempt to get my detective stories up on my site too. of course, i have to stop writing them in my head and actually write them.
sleep for me now. no alarm. don't drink and drive, and if you do, don't get caught.

long time, no see
or post or whatever. i'm lacking internet access on my own computer because something isn't working right in the modem and it can't be hooked up through the hub. hopefully we'll get that taken care of before the end of the week. it's annoying, but it's forcing me to spend less time playing around pointlessly on the internet. but i do need to do research for a story, and there was something i wrote that i wanted to send out to the nanowrimo group that i may or may not be able to get to from this computer. i'll probably post it here anyway at some point.
i'm going to give MK a parachute. he needs one. he is still falling and fears the packers will win the superbowl. i fear so as well, but i like brett favre (did i spell that right? i never know.) and i think he deserves to win the superbowl. and if he doesn't deserve it, i think he'll will his way to a win no matter what. he is that kind of player. so, mk, here is your 'chute. don't forget to pull the cord after the superbowl. happy landings.

happy xmas n shit
christmas day. all is quiet. sort of wish i was with my family just to see my nieces tearing open all kinds of cool toys only to play with the discarded wrapping paper. that's what i'd do. wrapping paper makes cooler sounds.
tried to play halo with hubby. um, no. i don't like the way the split screen is set up, and it moves like resident evil. which way am i facing? what side is the door on? what the fuck? tried to play mech assult, but we tried two different missions and could find no enemies to kill. whatever. we mostly played DOA. those pretty little red headed ninja boys need to show some skin to keep up with the bouncy girls in tight leather outfits, if you can call anything they wear clothing. unfortunately, on the xbox, you have to have a booster disk or subscribe to the online thing to unlock extra costumes for the characters.
a note on sports. i saw a piece on espn this morning about joe jurivicis, receiver for the tampa bay bucs. in january, he and his wife had their first child. in march, that child died from a rare and uncurable disease that was severely hindering his lung development. i watched this big man, a football player, a tough guy, shed tears as he told the reporter about the one time shortly before he died that the baby opened his eyes. joe and his wife are now very involved in the march of dimes and other such charities.
and then they talked about the shit that went down with baylor university's basketball program that culminated in a young man being murdered by his teammate. and i thought about how interesting sports is not just for the drama and passion of the games but for everything else. it's the best and worst of humanity with easy access. and i think that's why so many people are drawn to sports. it's david robinson versus kobe bryant, good versus evil, the most basic struggle of all, the underlying theme of just about every story ever told. it's the orginal reality tv. who needs survivor when bobby knight just opened his mouth again?!?! sports, more so than anything else in this country, gives us heroes and villians we can follow every step they take. if we have a television, a radio, a computer, we are not without sports. and i wonder how those little cross sections of life reflect the bigger picture. and i wonder how many of the men and women in those cross sections realize the weight of what they do, not just in their sport but in life. if the media attention on lebron james, for instance, had not been so intensive, would he have opted for the nba? probably not. and what message does that send with either decision? of course, there's the argument that these people are merely athletes and should not be viewed as heroes or role models. but it's hard to ignore them, and the media doesn't filter out the bullshit. all too often, the good guys fall through the cracks.
i think i'll stop here because i could keep rambling on with no end in sight. and i haven't gotten into the wine yet.

gender genie!
i found this is the nanowrimo forums, which i still lurk from time to time in search of interesting things to read. i'll have to find the one on people who hate nano. that was a hoot.
anyway this cute little tool can tell your gender by the way you write by analyzing certain key words. there's a definite difference in the way men and woman communicate, for instance, a woman might say, "it's a nice day, isn't it?" whereas a man might say "it's a nice day." women, it may be infered, are looking to engage in conversation, be agreeable or have the assertion affirmed by a second party for a variety of reasons. men don't tend to mince words nor do they seem to care about getting their buddies involved. can you imagine the sports bar conversations they'd have? i have one running through my head right now. it needs to stop.
anyway, i stuck in four pieces of fiction. and it told me the writer was male every single time. the most overwhelmingly male piece was "a whisper in the ghost," a short story that can be found on my website, talon's tall tales (link over on the side there), under the "BONUS!!" section of starbursts and shadows. why is it so overwhelmingly male? i don't know. it counts certain words as male and others as female. it's a usage thing. maybe because a majority of the writers i read are men, i've picked up on their usage. if i'd been reading nothing but danielle steele and the like, i'm sure it would have been a different story. of course, the fact that the first person narrator of "a whisper in the ghost" is male may have influenced that just a bit. but this just reaffirms my belief that i'm a man trapped in a woman's body. writing isn't the only thing i do like a man.
go to http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.php to try the gender genie on your own writing.
happy holidays to all. i wish you all peace both in your hearts and in your homes.

take 2
tried to do this earlier but had nothing to say. just one of those days where i feel all my energy fading into the shadows, as if part of me has left with out saying goodbye or at least leaving a note. i feel like a jangled ghost of myself sitting in the middle of a dark graveyard, all the headstones and bare tree branches scratched out in grey and white and cold but not because it's december but because of absence. and i read all these things other people write and wonder why i bother writing anything at all. i will never be a published author. never. even if i had the balls to submit stuff, nothing is good enough for publication, despite how much i liked writing it or like rereading what i wrote. sometimes i wanna take down my website out of embarrassment and vow never to write again, but i've felt that way innumerable times in the 18 years i've been writing, and i always come back to it. i'm in the middle of something of a block. after nanowrimo, i wrote two short stories, cucumber and indian summer halloween, both of which had been bothering me all november. then i put this year's nano crap on my website. since then i've been writing bits about a story i've wanted to write for over four years now and just never felt comfortable enough with the characters to write. now i know what i'm doing, since parts of the story have been told in the derelict ship episode and in brain damage. and a little bit in samurai star. but the problem is that i've still got a bunch of other stuff to write. i have six folders of notes and scenes plus a short story i've been writing to keep myself sane at work. i hate telling any of my characters to wait because i love them all so much. but my muse seems to have passed out in a drunken stupor (again), and they have no choice but to wait. if i could take a whole month off to write (not november), i could make some headway. i put everything on back burners for so long that i can't get the front burners fired up again, and of course, there's that sneaky little old story that i adore that needs a little tlc which is a simple thing of cutting (at least) two scenes and getting the passage of some time a little clearer. of course, i'd be better off without distractions like the internet, hockey and books to devour.
oops i forgot to do the christmas cards. i knew there was something i was supposed to be doing other than reading neil gaiman's journal.

boredom
I should probably use something a bit more legible as a font here. But I like this one very much. I've used it extensively in creating cover "art" in photoshop for a series of detective stories. I just like the way it's all broken. It makes me think of very old newspapers or dusty books you shouldn't read, and my detective stories defintely count as that latter.
Of course, as far as I know, only one person is reading this crap I'm putting up here, so I'll worry about legibility later. I'm already not liking how very few changes I can make on this thing. But just like with hotmail, ya get what ya pay for. In both cases, I ain't paying nothing, so that's what I get.
Like I care.

holiday cheer
Got up early do to Christmas shopping today since I hadn't had a chance any other weekend. I don't really like Christmas for a number of reasons, but I can't bring myself to boycott it. Because I like the essence of it. I like the idea of giving, not just material gifts, but the gift of love to friends, family and fellow humans. There is no holiday that isn't a commerical specter of itself, and of course, you have the invented days of mother's day and father's day. But I try to see past all that. I don't need to spend vast amounts of money to get meaningless shit for people. I still spend more than I should, but who doesn't. But it's nothing lavish or special. It's just something I want to give to someone I love. That's all it needs to be. But when I got home, my husband had to go and taunt me about how he loves me more than I love him because he spent more money on me than I did on him. He claims he was joking, but that kinda hurt my feelings. Okay, not kinda. That hurt a lot. For the record, I spent 52 dollars and 98 cents on his stuff. I got him a new pillow and a new quilt. Not what wives get their husbands? Yeah, well, that's what I get mine because that's what I want to give him. Because his pillow is flat and his quilt is old and falling apart. We sleep with separate blankets because I get cold easier and we're both too twitchy to share.
But the money shouldn't matter. It's the love that comes with it. I don't wanna say it's the thought that counts. It's not. It's the love.
I continue to try to celebrate Christmas for the love, joy and peace that it should represent and because I think that when I stop trying to feel that and share that, I will have become too cynical for this world.

a threat of snow
it snowed for two seconds today around 1:45 or so, and the people i work with lapsed into a strange psychotic episode. i have witnessed this phenomenon before. (whoa, i'm impressed. i can spell that word while drunk!)
i think i am going to establish a center for the study of snow psychosis, concentrating on just such behaviour as was displayed this afternoon, all day really, that was just the peak of it. and there may be a subgroup devoted to insane bad weather driving behaviour. provided i get adequate funding that is.

thoughts on ice
these are some things that were going through my head monday after sitting in traffic for about an hour and a half on my way to work. orginally posted on another message board preceded by the lyrics to the beatles "i'm so tired" because i was so tired ...
there was just something wrong about the silence and gloom last night. i laid there for an hour. okay, so what? that's normal for me to take an hour or more to fall asleep. but i could not close my eyes. i got up. trundled down the stairs, in the dark, went to the kitchen, got a glass of water, lugged myself back up, in the dark. it was so cold, and i could smell ice and smoke in the air, that rich, tangy smell of wood smoke rising up through sooty chimnies. i hate cold. i hate the ache in my hands and the gloom, even on the bright days like today ended up being. winter never used to be so harsh on me. wonder what it's had against me these last few years. must be the tropical blood in me -- my grandfather is filipino. but i wrapped myself up in a blanket and poked my nose into another world until about two thirty when i decided getting through the work day on nothing but caffeine was probably not a good idea. things still felt wrong. my husband was sleeping in the bed for the first time in three days, and he had flipped and flopped himself into a little ball in the middle of the bed. how a six foot three man curls like that, i still can't figure. but at least that part of the bed was warm.
woke up to my 6:00 alarm thinking i ought to give myself another day of bedrest, just to make sure whatever pet virus i had was really dead and gone, but by six thirty i was dragging my ass out of bed going no can't miss any more work. damn my sense of duty.
shoulda listened to that bad omen feeling of after midnight silence creeping up my back like that. looked like a light snow had fallen over night. stuck to the cars and the tops of the buildings, and that was about it. had to gently gently coax my key into the lock and turn it carefully so as not to twist it like i did once before. thought the door handle was gonna break off i had to yank so hard. my hands, bundled up, were already hurting. gah, i wanna go back to bed. to make matters worse, i gotta feed my power steering leak. stupid piece of shit. i pop the hood but it doesn't pop very well. great. i had to take my gloves off to get my fingers under the hood to pry it up enough to open the damn thing. and that leak is so fucking thirsty i could stand there and give it a whole bottle and it wouldn't stop squealing. so now my fingers are killing me. one of ems got little red welts under it from touching the icy metal. have i mentioned i hate winter? i wanna move to phoenix. or new orleans. i can handle hurricanes. ice, not so much.
gloves back on i gotta scrape my damn windows. but the air is so still it doesn't feel so cold. then i realize what that bad feeling was. my tires slip a bit as i turn out onto church street. oh great. drving will be fun today.
i was fine for the first fifteen minutes and then all the cars stopped. shit. i saw five accidents and one TTA bus with a blown tire. i saw morons rushing up the shoulders on the over passes where all the ice was. fucking stupid. i just hung back, let em go. i'm not in a hurry. at least the heater in my piece of shit works. and the tape deck, sort of. i'm listening to the las. you know, the brit boys who originally did there she goes. good good stuff. that started at seven thirty. i got to work at ten to nine. yes, i was in traffic that long.
and all day, i sit there thinking about wrecks. and i'm so tired i can't tell how i've done the amount of work i've done. i think about my car spinning out, flipping over, breaking my bones, crushing me. unpleasant. i'm tired i want to go home. i eat on my 20 minute break so i can skip my lunch and work until five to get eight hours. fuck overtime today.
the worst one was at duke street, about halfway up the durham freeway. a car was upside down on the hood of another car. no ambulances. i don't know if anyone was hurt or killed and i don't wanna know. i don't wanna look. i hate car wrecks. i will always avert my eyes. always. i just wanna drive, get where i'm going. i don't understand why people gotta stop and stare. i guess it's just a "glad that ain't me" kinda thing.
well, one time it was.
i was fifteen. i hadn't even learned to drive yet. i think my mom was terrified of trying to teach me, since i was the oldest. she'd never taught a kid to drive, and i don't think she had any confidence in my ability to do so. we had gone up to annapolis maryland to watch a navy v. air force academy football game. my clearest memories of the game are the fly over of f-16s before the start -- i love airplanes, love flight, was in airforce jrotc at the time, wanted to a fighter pilot -- and the falcon that was the air force academy's mascot. didn't get to have him on my wrist but i saw him close up. fucking beautiful. i loved his eyes.
we were cruising down i-95 on the way back home. it was dark, i was half asleep. long day, long drive. suddenly i hear my step dad say oh shit.
you know those whirly kind of rides at fairs and stuff, the kind that spin and gravity pins you to the side but its all fun and games so you scream in glee? this felt like that. spinning, pinned in place by gravity -- pulling g's, like a fighter pilot. but those screams weren't glee. i wasn't even sure i was screaming. i felt air passing over my vocal cords, heard distant voices. what i really heard was glass breaking, metal crumpling like christmas wrapping paper, my mother screaming.
for me, it was impact that was the worst. i didn't feel any impact whatsoever, just the sensation of it. for years, in my nightmares, i felt the sensation of impact, heard glass crashing around my head, heard everyone screaming and yelling except me. i was an ineffectual screamer. just air over impotent flaps of tissue somewhere in the recesses of my throat. one night, i lay awake in my bed and listened to a car crash that i knew was not happening anywhere but my head. i was awake. i know that because it was a night i couldn't close my eyes like last night.
none of us were hurt, thank god or whoever for that. the really creepy part happened while my mom, my brother and i were sitting in the ambulance while my step dad talked to the cops outside. a volvo full of college students slowed down to take pictures of the crash. and they got rear ended for their trouble. that sound ... i went hot and cold and quivered.
so i don't wanna look, okay. nothing to see here move along.
and then there was the shape.
the afternoon that i graduated from college in may of 97 ended kinda overcast and humid as all fuck. 460 turned into a parking lot. there were helicopters, cops, ambulances, tow trucks, flat bed wreckers. took over an hour to get by that wreck, and when we did, i saw on a gurney at the back of an ambulance, a white sheet pulled up over a familiar shape.
so no, i don't wanna look.
i don't have crash dreams any more. i'm not skittish in traffic any more, unless i'm a passenger in a car being driven by a maniac, as my husband sometimes is. bastard he knows i hate that but it's like it's some competition. it's not fucking nascar, okay. if someone passes you, who the fuck cares? you are not safe at speed, no matter how taut you feel and wide open and reflexes on a hair trigger. no no, dear speed wants to kill you.
i'm so tired ...
i'm gonna go watch football.