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So I get home and I eat a little (first mistake) and pet my cats and I sit in front of the television and there I'm stuck because my roommate loaned me a copy of Waking Life which I haven't watched yet. I like what I saw, but it feels too much like Slackers - a more intelligent version of Slackers, but still Slackers (although infinitely preferable to the dumbed down version of Slackers Suburbia) so I could turn it off. I liked the Existentialism lectures - kind of clarifies why I gravitate towards existentialism (and why my favorite bookin the Bible is still Koheleth) and how most people just don't get existentialism and find it depressing when it's really not. And also why I hate post-modernims (or deconstructionism) or gives another reason for it.
And then I finally drag my overweight carcass to the computer and I'm too damn sleepy to do anything. I didn't eat anything all day. Nor did I drink coffee. I worked and I spent most of my internet time on netflix picking out movies (my roommate also gave me access to his netflix account. Sweet, especially since Blockbuster says I owe them $6 for a Deadwood disk that I know I brought back - of course I am being hypocritical since I am holding a $6 err against Blockbuster when I wasn't terribly concerned with the $22 err in my favor - unless there really was a reason for that credit that just kind of showed up on my account one day) and there I was in front of the typewriter doing nothing.
What's worse is that I designated June as a catchup month for the novel-length manuscripts. It's been a couple of years since I finished my last novel-length manuscript (and that felt accidental - just a short story that wouldn't end - and there's an AIDS death in it which might make it terribly out of date - especially since the characters are clearly people that went to college in the early 90s - but then again, just because we don't hear about rampant AIDS deaths don't mean they aren't happening.) and I have about 20 folders in that "Potential Novels" folder just sitting there mocking me. Ooh that was a cool idea for a novel. Let me write 5 pages and then forget about it. Oh that one too. And that one.
So I'm trying to write two novels this month - well get into them at least. One was a short story that just kept going last month and one is a fantasy. Only I decided to put the fantasy in the far off future because I don't want to get too hung up on tribal affiliation or any of that shit that makes me read fantasy and think that it's bullshit. And I really have got to change the name of the monster at the end of the journey since Baruvaz Ra means "The Bad Duck" in Hebrew - well maybe - I probably fucked that part up too. That's one where I know more or less where I'm going (there was an annoying short story about a warrior that was chosen to fight a monster but had to die to complete his task - I figured I'd do the same thing but make the warrior into a mythical Greek Hero because they are more fun to write about, ie. they never follow the script.) And the former is a zombie story.
Ok the problems. The fantasy is stuck in the camp. I am trying to lengthen my descriptions and linger in places where I usually just note and move on. So I got the ceremonies going on, and it's boring me. I know I'll probably kill it in the next draft but I'm hoping to stumble upon a few descriptions that put the time and place into perspective. Or at least get trippy.
The other one started out well with the protagonist walking through his roomming house with the winter going outside. I mentioned that he crashed his car into a zombie so now it's a zombie story, only it's a bad zombie story since I don't even show the zombies yet. And the way I'm going with it, they might never appear. It's all in the post-zombie invasion time when everyone's adapted to them and the Zombie Report comes after the Traffic Report and the Weather Report. That's a fun conceit but now what. Beyond the fact that the protagonist has a package from the woman whose car he totaled and she wants him to do SOMETHING with it, I have plunged into the depths of boring little soap operas.
So there - one hell of a problem when I'm sitting down to write (high ambitions hitting boring details and grinding away) and I combine that with sleepiness (mostly from worrying about this fucking rent situation - and not even worrying about what is happening which is fairly inocuous but what MIGHT happen. My roommate might move out. I might lose this job. Sure they said it could go on indefinitely, but these jobs have a tendency to end at the worst possible moment - but then again are there really any good moments to end a job at. I don't know if anyone isn't relying on the next 2 paychecks to pay rent and everything else) and I just feel crabby.
And then I finally drag my overweight carcass to the computer and I'm too damn sleepy to do anything. I didn't eat anything all day. Nor did I drink coffee. I worked and I spent most of my internet time on netflix picking out movies (my roommate also gave me access to his netflix account. Sweet, especially since Blockbuster says I owe them $6 for a Deadwood disk that I know I brought back - of course I am being hypocritical since I am holding a $6 err against Blockbuster when I wasn't terribly concerned with the $22 err in my favor - unless there really was a reason for that credit that just kind of showed up on my account one day) and there I was in front of the typewriter doing nothing.
What's worse is that I designated June as a catchup month for the novel-length manuscripts. It's been a couple of years since I finished my last novel-length manuscript (and that felt accidental - just a short story that wouldn't end - and there's an AIDS death in it which might make it terribly out of date - especially since the characters are clearly people that went to college in the early 90s - but then again, just because we don't hear about rampant AIDS deaths don't mean they aren't happening.) and I have about 20 folders in that "Potential Novels" folder just sitting there mocking me. Ooh that was a cool idea for a novel. Let me write 5 pages and then forget about it. Oh that one too. And that one.
So I'm trying to write two novels this month - well get into them at least. One was a short story that just kept going last month and one is a fantasy. Only I decided to put the fantasy in the far off future because I don't want to get too hung up on tribal affiliation or any of that shit that makes me read fantasy and think that it's bullshit. And I really have got to change the name of the monster at the end of the journey since Baruvaz Ra means "The Bad Duck" in Hebrew - well maybe - I probably fucked that part up too. That's one where I know more or less where I'm going (there was an annoying short story about a warrior that was chosen to fight a monster but had to die to complete his task - I figured I'd do the same thing but make the warrior into a mythical Greek Hero because they are more fun to write about, ie. they never follow the script.) And the former is a zombie story.
Ok the problems. The fantasy is stuck in the camp. I am trying to lengthen my descriptions and linger in places where I usually just note and move on. So I got the ceremonies going on, and it's boring me. I know I'll probably kill it in the next draft but I'm hoping to stumble upon a few descriptions that put the time and place into perspective. Or at least get trippy.
The other one started out well with the protagonist walking through his roomming house with the winter going outside. I mentioned that he crashed his car into a zombie so now it's a zombie story, only it's a bad zombie story since I don't even show the zombies yet. And the way I'm going with it, they might never appear. It's all in the post-zombie invasion time when everyone's adapted to them and the Zombie Report comes after the Traffic Report and the Weather Report. That's a fun conceit but now what. Beyond the fact that the protagonist has a package from the woman whose car he totaled and she wants him to do SOMETHING with it, I have plunged into the depths of boring little soap operas.
So there - one hell of a problem when I'm sitting down to write (high ambitions hitting boring details and grinding away) and I combine that with sleepiness (mostly from worrying about this fucking rent situation - and not even worrying about what is happening which is fairly inocuous but what MIGHT happen. My roommate might move out. I might lose this job. Sure they said it could go on indefinitely, but these jobs have a tendency to end at the worst possible moment - but then again are there really any good moments to end a job at. I don't know if anyone isn't relying on the next 2 paychecks to pay rent and everything else) and I just feel crabby.
