Working Hardly for Hardly Working Tuesday, May 31, 2011

I’ve reached another point in the novel where I have to struggle for each word I write. I hate these spells because it’s so unlike me. Normally, the words just flow from mind to fingertips and I only pause every once in a while to correct typos. With times like these, however, I’ll stare at the screen just searching and searching for right word or phrase to use.

Sometimes, I trek onto thesaurus.com in hopes of inspiration. I never really find the exact word I want, but for some reason, when I’ve got a plethora of words thrown in my face at one time, my brain sparks slightly and I can get a small jump start to the writing. I had to go back for third and forth attempts at getting my mind to turnover, but I hardly got the engine running when it sputtered and died the moment I hit 250 words. Perhaps tomorrow will bring some sense of literary enlightenment with it.

I wrote 252 words tonight (unsure what ignited such attraction in the former) and, while I’d like to spend the rest of the night playing Rock Band or figuring out how to jump out of this painful pit of written fog, I’ve got a good deal of first-job work to finish and I don’t think there’s a way to put it off to another tomorrow this time.

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Are We the Waiting? Monday, May 30, 2011

by Green Day ~ American Idiot

My mind’s a little rattled lately given that I’ve watched nothing but Frasier for Lord knows how many weeks now and have listened to little else outside of Green Day for the past couple weeks as I’ve played through their Rock Band as if my life depended on it. Between watching all of Frasier Season 4 and playing through several more achievements on Green Day Rock Band, I’m quite surprised I managed to write anything at all today, considering that I’ve done nothing at all productive the entire day weekend.

I’ve got an amazing amount of first-job work still left to do tonight and I’m starting to get a little tired and I’m really not in the mood to do any of it and I’m kind of depressing myself just thinking about it further, but alas, such is life.

It is, however, the end of the month which means it’s time again for me to set some realistic goal to which I can strive to attain for the month, thus taking another a step towards becoming a better person. I’ve successfully written in this blog every day for the past 5 months and I’ve written my novel every day for the past 4 months, but I’ve not managed to adhere to any new goals since then.

I think, taking a page from my old LiveJournal, that I’m going to place a new importance on music. If I can spend an entire day playing Rock Band, I can at least find 15 minutes in a day to play the piano, especially now that I’m paying for lessons.

Under the same guise that got me to stop spending hours of my life on random Internet forums (every word written on a forum is one word not written in my novel), I’m going to fall back to the old edict of every song played in Rock Band is song I’m not practicing the piano. I know I probably won’t stop playing Rock Band the way I stopped forum-hopping cold turkey, but I will at least be conscious of the fact that if I can play Rock Band, I should also play the piano.

I wrote 938 words tonight (back home. As he passed). I could have written more, but with all my neglected first-job work looming overhead, I’m just not in the right mindset to do anything more this evening. Perhaps tomorrow will bring some of the peace for which I yearn so greatly. Perhaps…

317 Sunday, May 29, 2011

I’m not in the mood for anything right now…

I was playing Green Day Rock Band earlier and really wanted to finish some of solo guitar achievements, but then spent the rest of the evening trying to beat a boss in Final Fantasy X, only to realize that, 30+ hours into the game, I’ve not got enough level points or whatever for my characters to beat this boss, so my only choice left is to just start over the game. So, I never got a chance to go back Rock Band and I’m barely conscious enough to continue watching Frasier episodes tonight.

I was going to title this post “Loser,” but since I wrote 317 words tonight (I found him. I found my dad) and wrote some notes to illuminate on a side storyline I’d been wanting to add, but didn’t know how, while simultaneously closing a gap between with Damen and Corey aren’t interacting for the next six weeks in the book and managed to get to church today, I suppose I’ve accomplished something.

Late again Saturday, May 28, 2011

I think it’s time to make more of an effort at first-job on Saturdays. Maybe wear some makeup and dress as if I care rather than just showing up in whatever. Also, get some sleep like I would on normal days because I didn’t get any sleep yesterday and was terribly irritable by the end of the day. I was so exhausted that I was in bed before 9pm and didn’t wake until morning. I’ve not done that in a really long time and I’m still a little tried, even now.

I wrote 362 words (slamming on her brakes often) and have decided that I’ll be going to church Sunday, by hook or by crook. It’s scandalous that I’ve gone as long as I have without it. Plus, I’ve really got a lot of first-job work today this weekend and I’m a little superstitious about working on a Sunday when I’ve not gone to church…

1121 Friday, May 27, 2011

On an extremely personal level, the numbers 11 and 21 hold no specific value for me; 11 and 24 do as that’s Grandma’s birthday, but not so much 11/21. At the back of my mind, however, I see 11:21 in the morning or at night and smile to myself because I remember that that’s the birthday of the wife of the creator of The X-Files and I remember that the numbers 11 and 21 together often appeared throughout the show and, across my later childhood and adolescence, I had always grown excited when I saw 11/21 in some capacity.

I mention this, not to show what a huge nerd I am, but to convey how my mind seems to work. Tonight, I hit “the zone” again where the right side of my brain takes over as if it were another personality out of multiple battling for control of the single host body. The right brain just writes and writes without care of hunger pains, thirst, pain in the wrist, my back, my butt, my chest, my neck, my eyes or even my jaw. The right brain just knows it has prose and dialogue it must release and, once it takes control of the body, no other senses take precedence until the right brain has said its fill.

Once the right brain is done, it almost floats to the subconscious like an evil demon fleeing from a purified body and leaves in its wake a tired, hungry, thirsty, pain-ridden husk of a Dorienne. That said, I did get a lot of writing done tonight and had some great fun researching which “King Charles” of England was the one with all the illegitimate children (it was Charles II) and also reading through about two scenes of Hamlet to find the exact words I wanted to highlight.

Tomorrow will be a long, sad day because the day after such a rush is always a long, mournful one and leaves me wishing that the right brain would take control once again to pull me out of the doldrums of ordinary life.

I wrote 1121 words tonight (“A little,” she spoke to the floor.) and my back hurts so much and I’m so hungry and thirsty and exhausted that I’d like to just crash to the floor out of fatigue, but dare not for fear that I’ll starve to death in my sleep. Perhaps some food and a little bit of Roseanne or a movie followed by wistfully sleeping with Frasier playing in the background…

A new project Thursday, May 26, 2011

I got some…I can’t tell if it’s good or bad news yet, so I’ll just call it “news.”… at first-job today and I knew shortly afterward that I needed to go see and hear water before I completely lost my sanity. In addition to seeing the water, when I ventured down the reservoir, I also got to take some pictures of a storm rolling in across the water and came up with an idea for a new project.

I was so enthralled with the idea that I imagined myself setting aside Damen and pouring all my efforts into my new project, but when I struggled to find a name for my new protagonist, I had to let that daydream slide for a bit. I still haven’t got a good name for her yet. I’m leaning towards Emily, but I think I’d like something a little more “modern” and I still can’t say much about her other than that she’s a she and she’s pale, but other than that, I’m lost.

I’m really loving this newfound fondness for opera and classical music. I figured out that I could get Pandora to work through my car iPhone adapter and am now intrigued by the prospect of buying a subscription to Pandora or Slacker. Oddly, the different services cater to different needs and really live up to their names. Where Pandora is more like music exploration and panders to my desire to make an even more direct station by liking one track and disliking another. There is also an odd pleasure in disliking a song I adore on one station because I was trying to create a smoothe and mellow station. Slacker, on the other hand, if anything, promotes me to be a slacker in that I don’t really have to work as hard to listen to good music. They already have a nice little set of pre-made stations and, though there’s an option to create custom stations in the same vein as Pandora. With that said, their plan is slightly less expensive and a subscription means I could skip as many songs as I wanted and have the option to cache songs to my phone. On my third hand, however, the current stations I have are already so fined tuned after a year or finessing that I have little reason to skip any song that plays. And, the debate in my mind, goes back and forth several more times…

Anyway, I wrote 337 words tonight (mother would never let that happen), though it came incredibly close to not happening, but again, I wanted to just keep this drive going for just one…more…day.

My eyelids have grown heavy and it’s becoming far more difficult to type coherent sentences, so it’s time to say adieu for the night.

Error: No title entered! Wednesday, May 25, 2011

All this watching Frasier non-stop got me interested more interested in classical music, hence the reason I wanted to hear classical music so badly as I drove my new car for the first time. Specifically, I’ve been more interested in arias from different operas which drove me to Pandora to try my best at creating a station to mimic the one I’d found on the radio that played a healthy mix of nocturnes, arias and the like. In playing with Pandora, I took another look at Slacker and then spent the majority of the evening researching which of the two was the better app for iPhone and for me. So, I didn’t really get any more writing done other than what I’d already written this afternoon and I didn’t get to play any Rock Band either.

Today was an odd mix of confusion, stress, boredom and fun. There are times when I’m sure that I’m going completely crazy as mind my struggles to remain clear and think rationally. I’m also suffering from some pretty fantastic sleep apnea lately, which is made even more incredible considering the bouts of insomnia I’ve been facing. So, I’ll not sleep for days and then eventually, fall into a sleep so deep that I stop breathing and then throw up in my sleep. If I live to see 30, it’s only by the grace of God. Honestly, that I’ve survived to 26 is proof enough of that.

I’m done babbling…

I wrote 273 words today (with The Phantom Tollbooth within an arm’s reach. ). If anything helps get the creative juices flowing and going, it’s these monthly cycles of craziness and insomnia I face each month.

707 Tuesday, May 24, 2011

I think I like this concept of playing just one game at a time on my Xbox. I haven’t played games like this since before I left for college and, now that I think about it, I used to play just one game at a time back then as well. Hmm…

I’m a bit exhausted from playing the entire Green Day American Idiot album for the corresponding challenge in Green Day Rock Band, but I enjoyed getting through the entire thing. At this point, I’ve become moderately good at Hard mode, so Medium goes very smoothly for me and is so nice and relaxing that I can just let the rest of the day float from my fingers with every strum.

Despite all this Rock Banding, I managed to write 707 words tonight (buoyed his spirit in just a few minutes). I kept trying to stop, but each time I’d pause to make some notes on what I would write for tomorrow, the notes came out as full prose and I’d continue for another sentence and another and another. You can never write too much, though, so it’s just 707 steps closer to getting a final project.

I can’t believe it’s been six months that I’ve been actively writing and four months of writing every single day, rain or shine, want or not, deal or no deal. It’s been a pleasant, although daunting, experience and I’m glad I’ve undertaken this task this year. I do worry a bit, however, about what I’ll do with myself once I have a draft complete. Perhaps, I’ll set the goals a little higher with editing two or three pages each night and then blogging about that. Who knows.

Well, now I’m really exhausted and, seeing as how I’m reaching that level of fatigue where it hurts to sit upright and hurts to breathe, I think I’ll check out for the night.

One last note about movies though: I watched Toy Story 3 last night, and I believe that this one is probably my favorite of the trilogy (that I hope remains a trilogy and doesn’t go into the whole “Bonnie” grows up storyline or into a bunch of Andy/Bonnie playing with the toys as animated shorts). I have to say, I haven’t cried so much in a kid’s movie since the end of The Iron Giant, let alone any other movie…probably just ET brought out the same level of lachrymal fluid…

Unexpected Monday, May 23, 2011

It’s that time of the month again where I’m feeling oddly blank and unsure what to do with myself. I play Rock Band for the majority of the day and plan to play a little more after I post, but I still don’t know what to do.

Of course, there are millions of things I could be doing with first-job, my writing and just general house cleaning, but I’ve been in this slothful, sinful stride these past few weeks that has made a little more difficult than usual to get motivated to do anything. Perhaps it was the Bailey’s…

Usually when I get into this fits of blankness, writing is the most difficult chore of the day and at first, it looked that way until I started to push a little to reach my 250-word goal for the day. I ended up expanding on the scene where Angel and Anthony find out that Damen bought tickets to LA without their permission and included some foreshadowing as well, which I’ve not been able to do recently since I’m still rather unsure what I’ll be doing with the rest of the novel.

I wrote 1287 words tonight (make as little noise as possible), an extraordinary feat considering how lazy I’ve been lately. I’m not entirely sure how best to spend the remainder of my night; Rock Band, writing or sleep, but I can only pray that tomorrow brings with it an aura of decisiveness and the drive to do something with myself. Right now, I’m not thriving; just surviving and one can only survive so long in this state.

The second week Sunday, May 22, 2011

This marks the second week I’ve not gone to church. I’m trying not to be troubled by the ease with which it has become so easy not to attend. To simply lay in the bed until 11 and then rise and say, “Oop…Well, I’ll never make it now. I guess I’ll just go next week…”

Anyway, I’ve done an obscene amount of gaming today; Green Day Rock Band and The Force Unleashed (again) to name the ones encompassing the majority of my time. It was speaking with someone the other day about games and how un-gamerlike I am by playing multiple games at one time and then never actually finishing them because I move between them so often that I can’t keep my attention on any specific one for any amount of time. One day, I’d very much like to complete a game to 100% of its achievements, but I’m really a terrible gamer since I’ve still not finished Final Fantasy X and seem forever stuck on the second round with Seymour.

All this gaming, however, has got me wondering for what I’m compensating when I play. There are a great many things I could have accomplished today, but didn’t because I was playing Rock Band and Star Wars games. I got to see my Bumby again, but outside of that, very little got accomplished. Oh well…I suppose I’ll complain about all this wasted time on my death bed…

I did manage to write 487 words tonight (her rhetorical question about his plane ticket) and I’ve decided that I’m not going to stress about word count any longer. If the first full draft of the novel is 300K words, then it is what it is and that’s why it’s called a first draft. If I try to pare down anything, I’ll end up telling my way through the novel when there is so many wonderful things I could show.

Uneventful Saturday, May 21, 2011

The world didn’t end today. Phoo…I was looking forward to a little looting, given that I didn’t make it to church last week, thus would not be fit for instant calling home.

Once again, I’ve got nothing significant to say other than I’m going to do everything in my power to start playing games all the way through to completion before I move onto another one. I haven’t got any games currently on pre-order so I think I can go another year before I buy another one and I now have a sizable pile of games that I’ve bought, but either haven’t started or in which I’ve only made a wee bit of headway. I’m thinking I may start with The Force Unleashed or Lego Star Wars Complete or maybe just continue with Green Day Rock Band since that is my latest purchase along with Lego Rock Band. Darn, these urges!

I wrote a measly 257 words tonight (if they could not keep quiet.), but considering I really didn’t have much to say tonight, I think I did quite well.

What a World Friday, May 20, 2011

So apparently, some folks are predicting that the end of the world cometh tomorrow…such tripe!

Honestly, I can’t imagine how anyone can call him or herself a Christian, acknowledge that God’s ways are not our ways and that He is ever mysterious, but then turn around proclaim that they’ve been given foresight into the knowledge of not just the day, but the exact minute when the rapture is supposed to occur. Again, such tripe!

Anyway, what really prompted me tonight was a discovery I’d made in the grocery store tonight about postage-paid greeting cards! What a beautiful concept! My relatives will be receiving a plethora of cards going forward, now that I don’t have to hunt down or go to the post office on a quest for a single stamp to mail a letter.

I wrote 344 words tonight (and left his room to get ready for school). I had got to 247, but 3 words turned into another hundred, but I really do love what I’m writing right now. Not enough to continue watching when I’ve got more Frasier episodes waiting for me, but you know…priorities.

Everlong Thursday, May 19, 2011

by Foo Fighters ~ Foo Fighters: Greatest Hits/The Colour and the Shape

It occurred to me this evening that it’s taken a ridiculous amount of time for me to finish what I had called Chapter 15 and I then took a look a the content and word count of the last chapter and realized that I had enough to fill at least two long chapters if not almost 4 normal-sized ones. I’ve since broken Chapter 15 into two chapters (15 – Confessions and 16 – Dana)

Once again, I’ve not got a whole lot to say about today and since I’ve got the remainder of Frasier’s Season 3 awaiting me, I know there’s not a lot of chance that inspiration will strike for the rest of the night.

I wrote 265 words (and still remained that morning) and started Chapter 17 instead of 16. With each completed chapter, this book just grows and grows to the point that I know it’s going to get painful to cut in the end, but I’ll just worry about that moment when it comes.

Bumby, part two Wednesday, May 18, 2011

I got to meet my Bumby today! He’s so precious that I didn’t want to go back to first job this afternoon. I not only burst into tears when I got to the hospital room, I stood to the side and sobbed for several minutes on top of it. I probably could’ve held him forever… 🙂

I wrote 269 words today (Hamlet for himself and Brit) and managed to finish Chapter 15 and that was with seeing my Bumby and completing a project for first job in the same day.

Yay! Bumby is here.

Bumby! Tuesday, May 17, 2011

I can barely think straight since I all can think about is the fact that Bumby is finally here. He took his time coming and I can’t wait to see him tomorrow.

I did manage to write 764 words tonight (spray-on hair infomercials together) which is outstanding considering that I never worked so hard to A) bring a scene full of dialogue out of absolutely nothing and 2) write a simple discourse between mother and son.

Mother and son…

Ah…Bumby is here at last. 🙂