Trauma Night Confessions

It’s fuzzy head time, brought about by getting up about two AM and not being able to do anything but drift in and out of something that felt like napping, but wasn’t.  There was a bit of pain in my legs and some churning in my tummy, but mostly what I have is a lack of sleep brought on by too many things going on in my brain.

I know there were dreams, but all I remember of them was being in an open area where I had to rate people who looked suspiciously like the Mother of Dragons, only a lot more jail-baity like she is in the novels rather than the more grown woman in the television series.  Why was I rating people like it was a wet tee shirt contest?  I have no idea.  My dreams don’t often tell me what they have in mind; I just roll with the madness.

Perhaps it’s a combination of things.  I have things on my mind that are keeping me . . . not troubled, but worried.  I also finished Chapter Sixteen of my novel last night, and with it ending on a downbeat, that means Chapter Seventeen, the penultimate chapter, is going to start on a downbeat.  The last chapter promises to be better, but this new chapter is going to be somewhat depressing, as well as somewhat confessional.

You bring together the three main character of my story, add in a little something I picked up from Chapter Fifteen, and you have a bit of a mess–one that I created because, hey, it’s how I roll.  Conflict is easy if you remember to follow The Manga Rule, and set up the dynamic of one guy, two women.  Dance them all around a bit, and before you know it something’s going to break . . .

Probably someone’s neck.

So I picked up in a place where the lights are down and there are pools of darkness, and Erin isn’t feeling all that chipper because of something she did.  And that’s where she gets a visit from–lets call her one of the bosses, a top goddess that comes to hold her hand while they work out what’s going on.  It’s this character, the one who is stepping onto the stage for a bit of limelight, that really gave me the idea for this story, because this new character was the subject of an erotica story I wrote for the hell of it maybe ten years ago.  It ended up on a website for a short time, and may still be out there somewhere, because nothing on the Internet ever dies.

There will be talking; there will be sadness.  There won’t be blood, because I can’t see someone getting their brains bashed out with a bowling pin, and I’m not serving milkshakes.  But there will be a bit of hand wringing, because guilt tends to do that to people, even if they are eight thousand years old.

Another six thousand words, maybe more, maybe less.  That’s all that remains for Suggestive Amusements.  Good or bad, it’ll be over, and I’ll move on to the next project.

We’ll see where my muse takes me.

I just hope it isn’t to the place I’m writing about.

 

Dipping Away From the Well

Well, then; that was a problem, wasn’t it?

Last night was a moment of dead reckoning that I couldn’t blow away.  When I mean dead, I don’t mean that I was literally pushing up daises, but rather I had nothing.  When I came to the computer, I couldn’t work up enough enthusiasm to do anything.  The ennui I’ve mentioned the main character in my current WiP is suffering from must have jumped out of the computer and grabbed me, because that’s what I had in large numbers.

Or it could have been something else, something that hasn’t actually bothered me for a few months–that something being depression.  I do think I have a touch of that, because I am not taking care of myself, and that’s always a sign that you’re care and concern are at an all time low.

The thing that helped out, however, was that I had the chance to chat with a couple of people last night.  Online, of course, because this is were most of my life exists there days.  My friend Kim reminded me that I’ve been working quite a lot the last few weeks:  I’ve been getting up at five-thirty every morning, coming home at five PM every night, and then finding an hour or two to crank out a thousand words–usually finishing up that last right before I head off to bed.  She told me I needed to find the time to relax, to take care of myself.

Then there was my friend Ruena, who started chatting, and ended up talking girl things for about an hour.  Though I wasn’t able to get into my story, her words did lift me up considerably, and by the time we were through I was in a much better mood–though by that time I was also falling asleep at the keyboard, testament to what Kim said about me likely being exhausted.

Despite all the things I thought out there about getting to it and writing, there are times when the well is completely empty.  You can go to it as much as you like, but eventually that damn thing is going to be completely drained, and you’ll have to wait a spell before water begins trickling in again.  Maybe it’ll take a couple of hours, or maybe a day, but most of the time it’s going to take a good night’s sleep, and some time away from the inanity that is social networking, to get things back on a even keel.

A change in the routine helps as well.  As I write this, I’m sitting somewhere with a coffee by my side, sitting in a chair, instead of camping out on a floor waiting for my daughter’s morning martial arts class to finish.  I’m considering getting out tonight, just for the hell of it, because It would be nice to leave the house behind and venture out into the wilds of the fair community–which is neither wild or all that fair.

It’s not the environment, however:  it’s the doing.  It’s cracking the code that is your life and turning around so that it works for you.

As for my story?  It’s the weekend–

Word counts are made to be adjusted.

Seeking Balance in the Sideways World

Up early, which isn’t a good thing, because I’m not getting sleep again, and I do need my sleep.  If for no other reason, it keeps me from flipping out and hallucinating throughout the day–

Oh, wait.  That’s called being a writer.

It’s coming up on a week off since I finished NaNo, and I’m feeling uneasy.  I don’t have anything to do, and it’s starting to tug at my head, because I need something to do.  I want to do something besides sit around playing with software, trying to make things that are cool to me, but deep down tell me I’m bored, and I’m stalling for time.

I’m stalling because I’m stuck for a project.

Usually something will hit me, tell me, “Hey, listen!” over and over, like Navi trying to show me the way to go, but it would seem she’s on holiday or something, because I’m not getting any clues as to the next big thing.  Other than to work on graphic projects that are only going to take me so far, because it’s not writing!

I’ve been in this place before.  It’s akin to hanging off the Trollveggen, wondering how much longer it’s going to take me to get to the summit, and if some bastardy trolls are going to get me before I’m there.  It’s the feeling that you have nothing holding you to the world save for a couple of clamps and some nylon rope, and if either of them ever give way, then you’re going to find life interesting for the few seconds it takes for your body to reach the base of the wall.

After that, not so much.

I have a couple of projects in mind, but nothing is smacking me across the face, saying that I need to do this one.  You often know what is striking your fancy almost before it does, but this time I’m stuck with the feeling that what I’m looking for isn’t there–at least not yet.

This isn’t the same as writer’s block, that mysterious force that keeps you from writing anything worth while, where you have no idea how to work through the story before you, or to even get started on a story.  This is more like, the ideas are there, but nothing seems good.  Or interesting.  Or worthwhile.

Maybe it is writer’s block.  If so, Chuck has a bit of advice for getting your Creative Mojo back, and I’ve already seen a couple of points that seem to be pointing at me.  Maybe there is time to do something else.  Maybe there is time to work on another creative release to get the juices flowing in another area.  In fact, I just had something pop into my head, based upon another idea that had come along months ago, and . . .

Well, it seems good now.  Maybe it’ll be good later.

I think I have something I could work on, a good idea that could be better.  Maybe I need to mind map this sucker out and see where it goes.

The story idea might not go anywhere, but it might lead me towards the next big thing.

That makes it worth while.

Penultimate Scrumptiousness

Chapters 23 and 24 of Her Demonic Majesty fell to the editor’s cursor last night.  Almost seven thousand words finished up and put to bed before I headed off to the same.

I’m getting a good feeling for this book.

It wasn’t a mess, but there were things that were clumsy, and they didn’t read well.  I’ve had a year to sharpen my craft, and I see things that I wrote in the heat of the, “I gotta get three thousand words out today,” moment.  So I fixed them–and, I believe, I fixed them well.

All of this was done last night while I teetered on exhaustion.  The night before I’d taken something to help me sleep, and it left me out of it in a bad way.  I’d spent most of the day feeling like I was going to fall asleep, and I think I did nod off for a couple of minutes.  So I went home–and instantly began having issues with my computer.  I think it was in index building mode, because the disk light spun, spun, spun all night, and it made writing a little difficult at times.

I was in an irritable mood as well.  Being tired doesn’t help, and I felt a little put upon throughout the day.  In a way, focusing on my story did a great deal to get me centered and off to bed in a better mood, because I certainly didn’t want to be ol’ Grumpy while trying to get to sleep, let me tell you.

Tonight, I finish the novel.  Then I start on the submission package.  I’ve already put together two, so all I need to do is follow the rules, and adjust accordingly.  Easy peasy, right?  It should be.  If I get it going tonight, I see no reason why I can’t get it all out by Thursday night, the 4th of October.

Then what?

Well, I’m writing another story.  It’s a Halloween story, and I’ve done one chapter, and have three more to go.  I know where it’s going, and what I’m going to do, but I’m going to keep this short and sweet.  If anything, I could end up being my shortest story.

Then there’s NaNoWriMo.  The countdown close has started on the main page, and it’s a reminder that all the nutty people out there who are going to try and crank out fifty thousand words in “Thirty days and nights of literary abandon” had best start getting this writing shit together.  Or, at the least, pretend they know what they’re going to do.

I have my idea.  I think I have a title.  I know what I need to research.  All that remains is to set up my Scrivener project and start fillin’ out cards.  It’s what I did last year, and it’ll work for me this year.

If there’ll be anything good to come of NaNo this year, it’ll be pulling me away from the madness that is the Internet.  I’m going to be incommunicado for most of November, doing what I can to stay away from Facebook, but I will blog during the month.  Writing is writing, and I loved writing my blog during NaNo last year.

Is love really the right word?

Let me get my thesaurus.

The Absence of Mind

No dreams to talk about today, because there weren’t any.  At least none that I could discuss.  You see, I didn’t get much sleep–

Correction:  I was back to getting about three hours of sleep last night.

I fell asleep about midnight, woke up about two, tossed and turned until about five, and the alarm went off at six.  I got a little dream time in during the hour before the alarm went off, but today is a seriously sleep deprived morning.  I was so out of it driving into The Cubical Hell (where I discovered that radio streaming has been blocked, which means it’s over to YouTube to listen to albums) that I was really afraid to be out in traffic.

So today is one of those days where the mind feels like it’s checked out and gone off on holiday.  I feel like I have the chills running through my arms and legs, and time is some relativistic entity manipulated by gamma factors.

Not the day I was expected, but it’s the day you get.  You make the best of it, and hope that by noon, you can get some coffee into the body and pick up a little steam that will carry you into the evening.

This evening I’m going to need it, because today was the start of the two-week push to get my novel nice, pretty, and polished, before I send it off to Harper Voyager for consideration.  It’s never good to try and edit when you’ve a mind full of cobwebs, and today I’ve got Metebelis Spiders–”All Hail the Great One!”–roaming about in my brain.

Yeah, you deal with the day you get, not the one you want.

Then again, being a little tired–or a lot–makes you focus on your work.  I’m not writing new material, but polishing, editing, getting my story in final form.  I’m certain there are things I’ve missed, and I’ll get them.

Twenty-four chapters in fourteen days.  Very doable.  Now is the time to make that push, so that by 30 September, I’m ready to submit.

Then once this is out of the way, it’s time for my Halloween story, and getting ready for NaNo.  The end of the year push when the writing picks up, and carries you through the end of the year, and into the next.

There is something else on the way as well:  my 500^th post.  This post is number 495, so come Saturday, I’ll have five hundred in the books, on the Internet, and I’ll be ready for another five hundred.  Well, another two hundred and fifty, at least:  I’ll do another special post when I reach my 750^th, and then another when I reach the 1000^th.  After that, who knows?  Maybe I’ll retire from blogging.

Ha!  Fat chance.

Though that makes me wonder:  how much longer will I keep at this?  I’ve been going strong for a year, and making another five hundred posts will take about fifteen months.  Sure, I can keep running at the fingers, but what will I talk about?

You know what I’ll talk about–

Anything I like.

Brachistochrone Trajectories Around the Mind

It was one of those days where the body said, “Get up, you have things to do,” the mind says, “The hell with that.  I am in no mood for anything.”

That was today.

There was nothing in me today, at least from 6 AM until about 2 PM.  Body was functioning, but the brain had walled up the joint, and wasn’t coming out of the bunker.  It wasn’t a lack of caffeine, I can tell you that:  two large cups of coffee were had this morning, and there was plenty of iced tea at lunch.

I should say there was something going on; a story in my mind.  This newest idea I’ve spoken of, that was there, floating about slowly like a Mars rover taking its time getting to the destination.  There’s a reason they do that:  delta v requirements.  Or, to put it in terms a layperson would understand, there is a certain amount of velocity change needed to go from one orbit to another, and you have to burn reaction mass to make that change.  If you have a lot of reaction mass, or a totally kick-ass rocket engine, then you get a huge change, and you can zip to your destination in no time, taking what is known as a brachistochrome trajectories.  If you don’t have a kick-ass rocket engine, or gigantic quantities of fuel, or both, then you creep out to where your destination is going to be in many, many month, using what is known as a modified Hohmann trajectory.

We are in later category, so we creep along in modified Hohmanns, and get help, now and then, from gravity assists.

I was very much in Hohmann trajectory today.  Creep, creep, creep . . . only I had no destination.

Around 2 PM, though, it was like a slap up side the head hit.  There was a very obvious “Eureka!” moment, and I started coding–and thinking.  Coding and story thinking.  I was off, doing two things, and that lasted until it was time to go–and beyond.  I get home, I slap dinner in the oven, hit the shower, and I’m still thinking about where to take this story.  When I come out of the shower, just in time to grab dinner and start this post, I know the start, the middle, and the end of my story.

Somewhere along the line I got me a kick-ass rocket engine.

Now, perhaps my friend Allison is right:  the reason I perked up is because I knew work was almost over, and I just wanted to get the hell out of there.  There’s probably more than a modicum of truth to that statement, though I’m not saying if she’s one hundred percent right.  I’ll just say–maybe.  Possibly.  Likely.

I’m in my jammies, thinking of going home tomorrow.  I’m hoping that most of the people who are going somewhere for the weekend are taking tomorrow off, and will be on the road tonight.  I am, however, anticipating that traffic will be hell tomorrow, so I’ll relax, take a deep breath, and go with the flow.

I have some writing tonight, and some this weekend.  I’m going to get my notes in order this weekend, ’cause I need to have these thoughts laid out so I don’t forget.

Then come Saturday–Daleks!

Hey, do I know how to party, or what?

Driving Towards Independence

As one pinned message I saw yesterday states, “Nothing exemplifies the United States like celebrating it’s creation by drinking beer and using explosives.”  No truer words have been spoken, and if there is one thing that is true about the 4^th of July, it’s that a large part of the population suddenly becomes like mentally deficient Mythbusters intent on blowing up anything and everything in sight.  One of the main reasons I got out of The Undisclosed Location, since it’s hotter and drying than hell there, and there are fireworks bans all over the place.  One drunk hillbilly + bag full ‘o M80s = burnt-down apartment complex.

Doesn’t matter.  I’ll be on the road again tonight, heading back, while all the bang-bang is ongoing.

So I’m here for the next 12 hours, then back on the highway for 2 1/2 hours, catch some sleep, work for two days, then back up here for the weekend.  Yeah, it’s a lot of driving, but there’s no way I want to be alone any longer than I need be.  I was hoping to work from The Real Home the rest of the week–no such luck.  I can’t push that line any more, it would seem.  Not a problem:  I’ll continue to do your dance for a little while longer.

Last night was the first time in a very long time I couldn’t write at all.  Not because I didn’t want to, but with everything that happened yesterday, by the time 9 PM rolled around for me, I was completely exhausted.  I sat at the computer, with Scrivener up and ready to go–and I couldn’t think.  The brain was stone, the fingers unable to comply.  I knew what I wanted to say, and probably could have finished off Part Nine in no time.

Just couldn’t do it.  I was so out of it, anything that would have come out onto the virtual page would have sucked harder than a Jersey Short marathon hosted by the Real Housewives of New Jersey.  That’s happened a few time in the past, but I’ve always managed to squeak out a few hundred words.

Not last night.

I keep pushing myself to get things out on this story.  Any of the pressure I’m feeling with this story, it’s all from me.  I know I’m the one generating it, and there’s a reason for it:  I want to create something good and worth-while.  I want to create something memorable.  And I want to do create something that’s also going to make me self-sufficient.

This stuff I do for the state–that’s sucker’s work.  I have no feel for it, no passion, no desire to continue.  But it takes up a huge amount of my time, and that means I have to push myself hard to get any writing in.  After I’m through with my blog post today, I’ll get into the story.  Right now it’s a little after 7 AM, so by 8:30, or there abouts, I hope to have Part Nine in the bag, with the start of Part Ten underway.

I gotta do this, because what I’m doing now isn’t sustainable.  Not for the long run.  Not for any sort of run.

Yeah, back on the road again tonight.

It better be the right road, because I deserve a better journey.

Quarterbacking in Motion

Back home somewhere in the Midwest, home of high temps and crazy storms.  Oh, sure, there was rain, but it’s not really enough to take care of the parched land I see every week when I drive between The Real Home and The Undisclosed Location.  I swear, we’re only one dumb hillbilly dumping hot coals into a trash can away from becoming a much flatter version of Colorado Springs.  But, hey:  we’re also only an election away from putting an assclown in the Governor’s Mansion who just the other day compared Americans getting heath coverage to religious fanatics flying planes into buildings and killing four thousand people, so what do I know?  Maybe a lot of people here would enjoy a state-wide bonfire.

Between Friday night and last night, I wrote about 2,500 hundred words for Diners at the Memory’s End.  Sounds like a lot, I know, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a lot.  At least not to me.  Part Eight took a lot of me, yes, it did.  Can’t say why, but that sucker seemed to take forever to finish.  I could say there have been a lot of outside distractions that were pulling me away from getting it done, and that would be true.  It would also be true that real life, as I measure it, was pulling me away as well.  My Muse has been busy–she’s a multitasking fool, you better believe it–and, of late, has been leaving me to my own devices.  ”You know what you need to do,” she’d tell me, and yes, I do.

Doesn’t mean I don’t like to hear your voice now and then.

I began thinking about what I want to do in the near future, and realized I don’t know what I’m going to do until I finish Diners.  This story has taken me quite some time to write; I started this sucker late in May, and here I am, 2^nd of July, and the story’s only a little over half finished.  It does feel like I’m taking forever to get this story written, and that might be due to the fact I’m only writing about 600 words a day.

Again, distractions.  They do take their toll.

If I think about my time line, I can finish up Diners by the end of July.  That would give me enough time to throw in another story before I get to November, and the agony that is NaNoWriMo.  I was able to finish it, complete it, win it you might say.  Last year, however, I had all day to write:  that was why I had some days where I did over four thousand words, and my average was like twenty-five hundred words a day.  This year, if I can put together two thousand words a day, I’ll be lucky.  It’s going to be a much tougher project, and will take a lot of internal fortitude to make it work and finish it by the end of the month.

Of course, the project will be a follow up to a story I’ve already written.  It’s also going to involve a bit of research between now and the middle of October, which will be my go/no-go point.  At that point I’ll decide if I want to put myself through the hell of getting a novel out during the following month.

Who knows?  Maybe that novel will join the NaNo Novel I’ve already got out to a publisher.

Worse things could happen.

The Morning Fuzzies

Oh, dear.  The fuzzies are back with me this morning.  Allow me to explain:

See, I was suppose to be writing last night.  I really was.  I was getting ready to sit down and pen out some stuff, and . . . well, thing never turn out the way you want them to, do they?  At least most of the time that’s what happens.

It happened here last night.  There were distractions; there were people I was chatting to, and then I found myself caught up in the middle of a lot of things going on that, it would seem, tend to pull me away from what I should be doing, and get me into something I shouldn’t be doing.

Oh, and there was wine involved.

There was about a half a bottle of wine involved, which is one of the reasons I’ve got the fuzzies.  As things go, it’s not that bad:  trust me, I’ve had a lot worse.  I’ll probably be a bad memory by the time my 9:00 AM staff meeting rolls around today–assuming my manager comes in.  She may be out this week.  Or not.  I’m not really sure.  That should give you some idea of how connected I am to what’s going on inside the office these days.

The funny thing is I did get into the story.  I got into it and started to write.  Oh, sure, it was a struggle, and I only did something like 300 words, but I did a nice little set up that will let me get back into it tonight–sans anything remotely alcoholic.  I simply need to stay away from that crap.

There is, however, a singular lack of snacks in the place.  When he’s aboard Liberator, Albert has access to a ton of snacks; around here, I have none.  I need to make a run to the store tonight before coming home.

Oh, and clean my earring, which I managed to get back into my now semi-infected lobe last night.  The swelling isn’t bad now–in fact, it’s down quite a lot from how it was Sunday morning.  It also seems to be draining, which is a good sign.  I need to keep it clean today, and I’m likely going to be making a lot of runs to the bathroom to swab it down.  Here’s hoping that the injured ear is back to snuff by this weekend, ’cause . . . damn.

One good thing that did pop up last night:  I was chatting with a woman I’ve known for some time now, maybe five, six years, and, to put it bluntly, she was probably hammered.  Smashed.  Drunk.  She likes to get lit up at night and Internet While Blind, which isn’t a good thing, since her brain can’t often keep up with her mouth.

So she’s going on about crap, and I’m trying not to pay too much attention, then when the conversation turns to me, and my writing, and how I’d really like to do this instead of programming, she says something along the lines of, “Oh, that’s a pretty thin line to work with,” or some such nonsense.  Really, I shouldn’t have expected much more than that, because she’s always been one to ignore what everyone else around her is doing, and play up her own problems–which are many.

Sorry, love, but this isn’t bothering me as much as you might think it would.  You and I both have job we’re not happy with, but in your case, you’re rather complain that you think you’re going to get fired, all the while thinking you’re going to take that opportunity and move back to California, and start over.

And me?  I’m working on that pretty thin line, trying to get something working–

‘Cause I am trying to start over.  In a good way.

Nothing Much is Nothing At All

Nothing.  That’s what this weekend felt like.

While Saturday wasn’t that bad, Sunday was a total waste.  I was fighting an infection in my left earlobe, and this general feeling that nothing was right.  I was tired, because I wasn’t catching up on the sleep that I haven’t been getting down at The Undisclosed Location.  I ended up munching away on junk food when I pulled into the apartment, and I was up until midnight before going to bed.

And when did I rise this morning?  About 4 AM.  Finally got out of bed at 4:30.  Still the same.  Three, four hours of sleep, and a day full of exhaustion.

The worst was that yesterday, other than the blog, I wrote nothing.

It wasn’t just not writing–I didn’t feel like writing.  I thought about finishing off the scene I’m into right now, with Albert and Meredith in their game, whacking out aliens left and right.  I knew, however, if I did, I was going to produce some might crap.  Whatever was written was going to suck mightily, and that wasn’t wanted.  The idea is, when I write, not to suck, and if I’d written last night, it was going to suck.

Ergo, I walked away.  There was no way the story was going to get a crap section.

The last couple of weeks have been this way, a fight to get some sleep, get through the day, get through the story.  The lack of sleep is becoming an acute problem, because it’s affecting me throughout the entire day.  By the time I manage to pull myself through the day at work, it’s back to the apartment, eat, then try to write.  Sometimes I’m doing very well:  other times I feel the struggle to get anything done.

There’s no stopping, but there’s also the feeling that something is coming to a head, and it won’t take long to get there.

There is also the feeling I’m struggling with this story.  I don’t want to struggle, but it happens.  You work through it, make the words come out.  There’s the feeling I messed up the time line, which is possible, as I’ve thought about what should happen after this current part if finished.  Tonight I’ll fix this; I’m nothing if not anal about my time lines.

Too many things going on at once.  May was crazy; June is even more insane.  Who the hell knows what July is going to bring?

Something new and good is needed, and needed very soon.  For it does seem as if I’m working in a vacuum here all of a sudden, with no feedback, little human contact, and even less human touch.

It’s the feeling that I need some kind of confirmation that everything isn’t for naught.  That this is going to work for me, because . . . the alternative isn’t worth my time.  The alternative is The Downhill Slide–  I refuse to go there, however.  It’s never going to be an option.

So many thing happening at once; no clear resolution in sight.  It’s like life, only with a great emphasis being unreal.

We all know how much life can suck, even in the best of times . . .