First Days of a New Life Saturday, March 19, 2022

A got a new job. After 15 years and half a dozen positions, I’m leaving the bank and I’m about to start a new venture altogether. It’s a bit fun and scary all at the same time.

For the first time in 15 year also, I’ve had to do the things that one does when starting a new job such as the usual drug testing and background checks. My mother remarked to me how good it feels to partake in such things without having to worry about the results, and it does, indeed, feel very good. It was just the extra icing on the cake to get those additional “welcomes” from the recruiter and my soon-to-be managers.

That said, I can’t help a tinge of sadness at these changes. For one, I’ll be leaving a boss who has been such a dear friend to me over the years. We’ll still talk and all, but I’ll miss sending her work memes just the same. What’s really hanging on my heart however is the thought that I’m really starting on a new part of my life and for the first time without being able to mention it to my dad.

With my parents’ birthdays falling on subsequent days, I’d always approached them as a time of some happiness. Joking with my father about being an old man and following it up with similar jokes to my mother to next day has just been something I realize I’d definitely taken for granted.

This time last year, I took both of their birthdays off. Now, it’s a time to think of the fact that I’ll have to continue through life’s changes without being able to tell my dad. My father worked in a lab that often did the drug testing for multiple companies and he’d always share stories of all the people trying their hardest to juke the system. After leaving my drug testing, the only thought on my mind was how much I wanted to call my dad and tell him about finally getting a new job and how I had to get tested. I would have told him about the site and what I’d observed and he would’ve told me several stories about his time in the labs. But, we don’t get to have that conversation, and it’s painful, I’ll say.

I think what’s fascinating in this life journey is how to handle my grief. I got through Dad’s birthday with no tears or really any melancholy outside of the ordinary. But it wasn’t until two days later that I sat replaying Mass Effect and came across a scene I’d played 6 or 7 times that I found myself just bursting into tears. Granted, it was an emotional scene, but not one where I usually cry. (“Legion, the answer to your question is yes.”) Subconsciously, I knew I needed to let it out and so I put on the North & South mini-series that I’d been avoiding for the last nearly two years.

North & South is a very favorite read and for a while there an annual re-read on my Goodreads list, and the adaptation with Richard Armitage does it extreme justice, though it does remove so many of the religious themes. The story is notable for the amount of family and friends the heroine loses over time, including the loss of her father. After my own father’s passing, I had to slowly re-engage with any media that referenced fathers. Even heart-warming moments on The Simpsons between Homer and Lisa were a bit too much in the beginning.

I usually cried watching (or reading) North & South, and I’ve not been able to bring myself to watch it since May 2020. I’d found myself watching a Jane Eyre adaptation from about 15 years ago to “reset” my mindscape after finally finishing The Wire (good God! what an amazing show), and then I decided to bring up North & South, because why not? I knew what was coming, but I pressed on anyway. After crying so hard that I had to pause and write a little, I think it’s fair to say that I did need some time to weep following my father’s birthday. Perhaps not on the day itself because others are so good to check in with me and make sure I’m okay, but I can probably expect that I’ll have moments like this in the future as well.

It’s hard taking new steps, especially when they’re not always wanted. I do my best to treasure what I can do, however. The Discord has helped me regain a writing streak and keep up writing over a thousand words a day, and I’m looking towards the future with renewed vigor and hope. After months of patience and lots of effort, God has given me what I’ve wanted. Noting that God’s got a sense of humor and that I’ve been given what I thought I’d wanted only to realize it wasn’t what I wanted at all, but I’m taking this rare instance to be optimistic for once.

Upon hearing about my new job, my mother told me the next day that it was the first day of my new life. I’ll likely find the same old nonsense at the new job, but at least it will be new nonsense with more pay and permanent work-from-home. This is going to be a real new venture for me. I’m sad to leave behind old ways and friends and I’m sad not be able to share this with my dad, but the optimism is there. These are first days in my new life, so cheers to myself for holding on and staying positive.

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A Flight (a novel) to Remember Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Eight years ago, at the age of 22, I sat at the same desk at which I’m currently writing and decided that the only way I was going to learn how I write novels was to sit down and just write one. I’d written two novels earlier, but as they were both completed before the age of 17 and neither were any good, I abandoned the idea of re-writing a previous project and perused my dozens of handwritten notes. I had notes about female football players and towns I’d called Mansfeld and even lengthy notes about what would eventually become Luka, but I sensed that none of these fit what I was trying to do. I needed something about which I was incredibly passionate and into which I could wholeheartedly throw myself without fear of upcoming boredom and, after a suitable amount of brainstorming, Flight, a novel was born.

I’ve written about Flight here a gazillion times because it was my first real effort in writing as an adult, but over the years I’ve simply looked back at it, fondly recalling what it was like to get new comments from Fanfiction.net about it, etc., and I’d shelved it as a long and so-so written story. Last weekend, however, I found myself honestly bored for the first time in…years, and I sought out something swamped with nostalgia. After cruising Netflix for ten minutes, I perked at the idea of re-watching the earlier seasons of Law and Order: SVU and three episodes in, I had an intense urge to revisit Flight.

I hadn’t actually sat down to really read more than a chapter or two of it in likely five years and, as I was already in an SVU mood, I figured I would laugh at my inability to tell a decent story and take a trip down memory lane. And, I was able to take that desired memorable trip…but I haven’t been able to put down my own old book!

There’s something that feels very narcissistic about reading one’s own writing as if reading the works of others, but I can’t help it. There are missing words every few pages, the prose tells the reader everything because I hadn’t learned “show versus tell” yet, the novel is over 450 thousand words, but I can’t help it! This book I wrote when I really had no idea what the deuce I was doing is compelling even to me, the writer, and I love it.

As I’ve been reading my own work, I’ve asked myself, why am I so engaged? It’s not written very well, it goes on too long in certain areas, and one of the plotlines falls completely flat, but I’m captivated. Is it because I’ve been so disappointed in reading the modern fiction of others lately? I wasn’t terribly impressed with The Lovely Bones and, if I’m honest with myself, I’ve likely turned to Flight because I just didn’t want to face reading The Night Circus anymore. It’s hard to say.

I enjoy this old work of mine on so many levels. Years ago, I put it into Kindle form, so I can actually read it like I would any other book, which just makes the process that much more fun. Aside from reading something that’s just generally enjoyable, I get to envision myself eight years younger as I was writing the very words on the page and that’s worth a post all on its own. For example, I was hardly six months into my current Christian Walk when I started the first notes for Flight and it shows. The use of “goddamn” in every other piece of dialogue is so prevalent that I can hardly believe that I wasn’t still an agnostic when I wrote it.

I’ve still got another third of the book left to go, but I’ll admit that I’ve not been this into a book since I read Gaskell’s North and South for the first time. I’m smitten with my own work, as shameful as it at first seemed, and when I shared this revelation, my mother advised that I shouldn’t feel shamed by liking my own writing. She posed that perhaps I write simply so that I’ll have something I want to read. I don’t generally like most modern fiction. Outside of greats like Crichton and King and then Harry Potter, the only books I’ve really loved in the last decade were written in the 19th century by British women…and to be honest, how far off is Potter from there? Before turning to Flight, I was re-reading Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Making of a Marchioness and loving every minute of it.

As I look to my current projects Anne and Jill, I can’t help but see them through different eyes after re-reading Flight. While I don’t wish to fully emulate what I’d created sans-Bachelor’s degree and eight more years of life experience, I do still wish I could recreate the same energy, the same excitement and fervor, in my current work that I had in Flight. Maybe this was what I needed to make peace with my writing endeavours?

As I did with Flight, I write for myself. I write just so that I will have something that I want to read.

Writing Recovery Friday, July 26, 2013

Whether it was from the absolute stress and nervousness of sending query letters or completing a project that has encompassed so much of my life for the past 4 years, I’ve spent the last week languidly procrastinating as I sought a new purpose. For the first time in AGES, I did not have a chapter to complete or several pages to revise and I found myself unable to do much more than sleep or read and then go back to sleep. It wasn’t until Wednesday that it occurred to me that the efforts of finally finishing a novel were taking their toll, but this shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me.

When I finished Evan when I was 15, I was still recuperating from my second ankle surgery and still on Christmas break, so my fatigue was well-expected and its source went unnoticed. When I finished Alex when I was 17, I was getting ready to start school at Ohio State, but I remember a week of stomach-gnawing stress and fatigue that I’d attributed to nervousness about starting college. When I finished Flight, however, when I was 22 (I guess; I’m too lazy to look up the completion date at the moment), I was preparing to graduate and, in posting that final chapter, I was ill and generally fatigued for weeks, which is why I couldn’t even think clearly about Damen until March-ish of 2009.

So, here I am, with another book finished and just as much fatigue as I’ve encountered with the previous ones. Unlike the other ones, I have nothing on which to place the blame. I’m not recuperating from surgery, or starting school, or finishing school. Now, I can see what writing a book really does to me and how much of myself I pour into every word. It is, without exaggeration, an exhausting process.

Today, however, I am quite refreshed. To occupy my time, I watched North & South and then read the book and then watched it 2-3 times a day and also while I slept and then re-read the last few chapters of the book again. To avoid fully falling into some OCD spiral, I refused to watch the film again yesterday, but still finished the book. I’d like to read the novel once more as I’ve started to read it like I read Persuasion or used to read Goblet of Fire; i.e., I read through favorite scenes, stop, and then re-read those favorite scenes a couple more times before progressing with the remainder of the book. That said, I know a cycle when it’s coming and it’s best, for now, that I move onto other things.

I’m not entirely sure what I will focus on writing this weekend. I’d like to write a poem or two in this “As…” project I’ve created and, while there’s no cure for the old novel like starting on the new novel, I’d also like to write something completely outside of anything I’d like to see traditionally published. A good ole’ fashioned SVU fanfiction or something, just to get the gears moving without wearing them down too soon.

Oh, well; we’ll see. It’s just as likely that I’ll spend the weekend playing games (dear God, that Steam sale!), so we’ll just have to see.

A well-read day Thursday, August 23, 2012

I’ve not written anything today (though, I may end up writing a little after writing this), but I’m not at all troubled by this.

I’ve been reading a ton; like, flipping between three books within the same hour kind of reading. Hunger Games, The Silence of the Lambs and also my book, Flight. I made Flight into a Kindle book for my mother to force her to read something I’ve written, though a year later, she still hasn’t, and I like to see where I was nearly four years ago when I first finished it. I like to read Flight as a Kindle book on my own, however, because unlike reading it from a Word doc or even online, I can’t suddenly stop reading and begin to edit, even though I may be compelled to do so. My errors are trapped in the ebook and I get to face them without means, albeit temporarily, to fix them. I’m not sure how vain it is to enjoy reading your own work, but I like it.

After watching The Silence of the Lambs on Sunday, I’m further compelled to read the book because it’s just so much better, which is quite a feat considering it’s also my favorite film of all time. Every time I watch the movie, however, I just have to read the book and since I’ve now read Hannibal and enjoy it’s ending so much, I know I’ll be re-reading that too. I’m still at the beginning of Hunger Games, but I enjoy it a lot.

I bring up all that I’m reading at the moment without a real way to describe why. A quote from Sex and the City, I think, summarizes my point nicely: “(Samantha) was one of the only people I knew who felt that proximity to beauty made her feel more attractive.” (from Models and Mortals) So, before I continue writing, I think I’ll do just a bit more reading.

Reading makes me want to write Friday, August 17, 2012

I’m a very competitive person and since I was in my teens, I often viewed the literary works of others as a possible threat to my success unless the authors were already long dead. Why I thought this is, even now, a bit of a mystery to me. Maybe it was just because I didn’t want anyone to do what I did too or something along those lines… Either way, I didn’t do a lot of reading in my mid teens which is when I did the most of my writing until my early 20s. Recently, however, the tides have changed and reading the works of others gets me even more excited to continue with my own.

I finished Octavia Butler’s Kindred this evening since I got to one of those points where I’ve only got about 50 pages left and I just can’t put it down until I finished. It was a good book, but her ending, like with Fledgling, left me staring at the last few words like “That’s it??!?” I’m always wanting more.

Since I’ve got a cycle going where I’m reading a Star Wars book, a more contemporary book and then a classic book, I’ve replaced Kindred with the first of The Hunger Games books, which has already garnered me a few likes on Facebook.

I love starting new books like I love creating new book ideas. No longer do I consider the works of others to be in competition with me. No longer do I fear losing my voice or finding myself writing in the style of a favorite author. Now, I view other literature as a chance to see how someone else “does it” and not only do I then get to enjoy someone else’s story, I get to become a stronger writer in the process.

Another scare Thursday, January 26, 2012

As technologically savvy as I think I am, from time to time, it frightens me. In one day, Micro$oft corrupted my novel’s file and it looks like my Google account may have been accessed from outside my country. Passwords have been changed and the novel is safe (more or less), but it astounds me how much I’ve come to depend on something that may throw me under the bus at any minute.

My whole life is connected to my Google account and one disaster there is almost as bad as having a wallet stolen. My novel has been nearly my whole life for the past few years and, while the majority of the work is backed up in pieces across multiple hard drives and my website, the most recent works could have been long gone.

I guess I don’t have too much of a point tonight, but needless to say, I’m not going to get a lot of writing done tonight. While I tell myself, if something written were lost, it was probably for the best, but I find a lot of comfort in re-reading old things and seeing how I came from Point A to B, hence the reason for this blog. I don’t like losing things, especially when I’ve done so much to safeguard them and even with files kept on a shared hard drive kept on Dropbox and backed up to my website, things can still go wrong.

Waiting for the moment Monday, September 12, 2011

I’m not sure when I developed a routine of deep procrastination prior to a project, but I wish I could break the cycle as much as I wish I could avoid being late. I want to say that this started in college when I would wait until the last possible second to write papers or study for exams, as if I were giving myself the added challenge because the coursework wasn’t interesting enough to hold my attention by itself. That’s incorrect though; I’ve been doing this probably since I was fifteen, if not earlier.

When I was fifteen, I set a goal to finish Evan, which I’d started four years earlier, before the new millennium and it wasn’t until I reached the end of December that I put my writing in overdrive to achieve the goal. When I was seventeen, I set myself a goal to finish Alex before I went off to school and I didn’t finish it until about a week before classes started.

This cycle of procrastination brings an odd rush with it. It’s like an extra set of endorphins that steadily release, increasing with the more time I let elapse. The less time I have to accomplish something, the greater the rush I get when I complete it. If I’ve got a paper due at 9am, the rush I get from waiting until midnight the previous night to write it is nowhere near the rush I get when I start at 4am to write the same paper.

I don’t think I intentionally crave this rush as I hadn’t really recognized it for what it was until just now, but I can’t think of any other reason why I’d put off projects, really, really important projects, until the very last second except to get a hit of that rush. It worries me because, as with any drug, you never know which hit is going to be the one to spin you into ruin.

I wrote 594 words today (like a five-year-old girl), but a part of me, however, wishes that I could reach that moment once again to push myself into overdrive for the rest of this novel…just one more hit.

Poorly adapted Thursday, August 25, 2011

Yesterday, I watched the absolute worst adaptation of a Jane Austen I’ve ever seen. I’ve not seen all that many of them, but I have seen my fair share of 19th century England period pieces and this was, by far, the worst. Mansfield Park from 1999…bleh.

I hadn’t read Mansfield Park at the time of watching, but I could tell within twenty minutes that something was amiss. The characters were not speaking in the 19th century mannerisms and, at several moments in the film, I wondered if these were indeed British actors as the acting was so bland and uninspired and I’d grown accustomed to expecting much, much more from British actors.

Also unlike other adaptations I’ve seen, I did not care about the characters at all. In watching Mansfield Park, I didn’t necessarily care for Fanny, the heroine, or care if she ever married or found happiness. I also didn’t care about her beau-to-be Edmund, whom I found duller than even Fanny. I didn’t care whether Edmund married another girl and, the way the story was set, I wasn’t even sure until the very end of the movie if Fanny and Edmund loved each other and would end up together.

There was also a lot of discussion about slavery throughout the film which, while interesting in concept, never went anywhere. It was as if everyone on the screen was talking about physics and all of a sudden Fanny mentioned something about slavery…and then it was never discussed again. It was like some kind of forced theme to make someone who did not care for Jane Austen’s story find something interesting about the plot.

I compare this adaptation to the 1995 Sense and Sensibility. I hadn’t read Sense and Sensibility prior to watching, but within the first ten minutes of the film, I loved the Dashwood sisters and was interested to see if they would find a suitable place to live on their pittance or if they would be forced to stay with their half-brother and his horrible wife. Later, I was just as heartbroken as Elinor when Edward did not arrive at the cottage and when she learned about Lucy’s involvement and then was just as stressed out when Edward did arrive in London when Lucy was visiting. Equally, I was just as excited to see Willoughby at the ball in London as Marianne and cried with her when she had her heart broken as well. There was none of this in Mansfield Park in which the writer and director had the audacity to dress up Jane Austen by dumbing down the language and pulling at strings to make it appeal to an audience that’s obviously incapable of understand why I a story about a lady seeking a suitable husband is interesting.

I think what hurts the most is that Netflix rated this as a possible 4 stars for me and I only gave it 2 stars and that was only because it was a period piece.

I do all of this ranting because I love Jane Austen’s work and I really can’t stand to see such wonderful literature destroyed in an adaptation. Why bother calling it an adaptation? Why not call it something different and add “based on the novel Mansfield Park” somewhere in the credits? I’ve seen other great books destroyed like this. Directors constantly did this to Michael Crichton novels; Congo, Sphere, The Lost World! It just makes me so angry!

Despite this movie that kept me up half the night because I was so mad about it, I wrote 617 words today (else to Brit for the rest of the period) and I’m bringing all the remaining chapters together in a single file to divide a bit later into “c” files once I’ve re-arranged the story a bit.

All the elements are still there, but I’ve removed some of the slow-moving ones and made the rest of the story flow properly, rather than seem like just a series of events seen through Damen’s eyes.

Tired now…and still a bit angry about that movie. I think what also irks me about this is that I worry that if Damen were ever published that some crazed director might hack it to pieces and call it an adaptation. A part of me wonders if I’d rather just not be published at all than risk that happening…but I try to quiet that part and just focus on my writing.

Potterly Saturday, July 23, 2011

As I write this post now, I am listening to “Buckbeak’s Flight” from the Prisoner of Azkaban score. I bought the score while the film was still in theatres; sometime after my second viewing, but before my fourth. Months later, I would watch the scene from the film that carried this very song because I just enjoyed it so much and wanted to keep the visual crisp in my mind when I heard the song.

My playlist has now changed to “A Window to the Past,” a song on the same score that I only recently discovered and associate, not with film or HP in general, but with John Williams’ music and its influence on my writing. I think this is how I view the entire Potterverse at this point in my life.

Aside from the obvious reference to a “window to my past,” I see HP as something I did as a kid, full of memories, I’d rather not dampen just because everyone in the world seems to be talking about it. That said, yesterday I finally made up my mind about going to see this last film in the theatres.

I wasn’t going to go, but then someone at first-job mentioned that this is my last time to see an HP film in theatres, in 3D and all that jazz. While I’m not exceptionally wow’d by the concept of a 3D film, as I prefer to be awed by immaculate storytelling and I’m certain that at some point in the next few years, these films will be rehashed and re-released Star Wars style, I accept that my co-worker did have a point.

I rented the fourth through seventh (part 1) films and plan to make this a Potter-filled weekend before going off to see it on Monday. I’m not excited by this though. It’s very reminiscent to the midnight party for Book 7. I hadn’t picked up an HP book since I finished Book 6 and found the magic to be almost literally broken, but I went to buy the book out of an obligation of completion.

I never saw the sixth and seventh films because I disliked the fourth and fifth movies and since I knew I hated the sixth book, I saw no point, but here I am again with this sense of obliging to completion.

I thoroughly believe the films lost their way around the fourth one, where the producers and screenwriters decided that it was no longer important to tell an actual story with the adaptation; only throw some images on the screen and hope that people who read the books has some iota which actor corresponds to which character. This believe returned in full sway after re-watching the fourth one last night. I remember generally liking the fourth one the first time around when I saw it at midnight, but knew I was going to be disappointed to see an adaptation of one of my absolute favorite books. Years later, however, that disdain has grown deeper as I had only the vague memory of the books to guide me, but was irritated that if I hadn’t had that, I would have been really, really lost in the movie.

Why did the fake Moody keep the real Moody in that box? Why not just kill the kid while he no one was around him (though I suppose this is a simply question for the novel itself)? Why was it important that Voldemort could touch Harry? Why the hell was screaming so much when Voldemort touched him? What was going on with the wands at the end? Why did Harry see his parents’ ghosts? Why were Voldemort and Wormtail holding up in that particular house? What was the deal with the skull and the snake sign? What was going on in the scene with the pensieve?

Oi…and now I’ve got three more films to watch of this.

Of course, I know all the answers to these questions because I’ve read the book a minimum of seven times, probably closer to eight, but in trying to views these just like any casual viewer, I’m left with irritation that filmmakers could be so greedy as to cut out all the substance of a book just to splash it on the big screen. Peter Jackson may have left out and changed some aspects of LOTR (hello, Tom Bombadil?), but overarching story was still intact.

I’m not really sure why I’m ranting about Potter tonight. I think it’s just been a long week and I want to rant about something and since I generally disliked that movie last night (no Dobby, no house elves, no SPEW, Krum was too cute, Diggory wasn’t cute enough, Fleur wasn’t a veela, no Bagman and that !@#$%^&* scene with face in the fire!), this will have to do.

I wrote 518 words today (a pair of scissors, two combs and a brush), not counting the ones I added to the Potter-fic ( 😉 ) and I think I’m going to use this weekend to be as annoyed as I want to be, while trying to write a little more as well.

Can’t Let Go Wednesday, July 13, 2011

by Mariah Carey ~ MTV Unplugged

My mind’s a bit drained currently, so it’s been difficult to come up with a decent title or even post on time. I’m writing nonetheless.

I watched The Dark Knight tonight and since I approached it thinking it was going to be hokey, I rather enjoyed it. I also had a lengthy conversation today about Harry Potter that got me wondering whether I should go see this final film and re-read the books.

I’ve been wanting to re-read the books for the longest time, but since Movie 3 put a bad taste in my mouth, Movie 4 made it much, much worse and Movie 5 made me want to get up and leave the theatre, I’m not too keen on the films anymore. I haven’t watched the sixth one or the first part of the seventh and I highly disapprove of the seventh book being broken into a two movies. If these producers were really smart, they’d have started splitting them at Movie 4 and then let it drag out until all the kids were nearly 30, not that some of them aren’t already.

It sounds like it would be so easy to wrapped up in all that again, but I’m not quite sure I want to do it. All of it, the books, the movies, the forums, just feels like something I did at 18. I’m very different today than I was at 18 and I worry about further tarnishing the series in my mind.

Movie 5 didn’t do the 5 book justice and while I could probably watch Movies 6 and 7 with no problem since I’ve not read those books in about 3 or 4 years, I’m not sure I’m ready to make the leap. A nagging part of me remembers the 18-year-old Dorienne writing an editorial for Mugglenet.com about The Surprise of Harry Potter and how enjoying it this point in history is far better than anyone else would have it and that somehow, I’ll regret not taking part in all of this. The rational side of my mind, however, says I’ve better books to read and write than Harry Potter at the moment and reminds me that I can’t get distracted. For now, I suppose, I’ll get my Harry kicks by playing the games based on Movies 2 and 5 (on the PS1 and Wii, respectively) and leave the movies to unaffected masses.

I wrote 443 words tonight (crossed his legs and went back to his book) and I’m a bit tired right now. I think I’ll retire for the night and pretend that I’m not going to have Potter-infused dreams for half the night.

A crying shame Wednesday, July 6, 2011

I remember the first book I ever read that brought me to tears; Charlotte’s Web when I was 11, and that was even after I’d developed my spider phobia.

I don’t know why I cry at books as much as I do. I cried reading the 4th, 5th and 6th Harry Potter books, I sobbed in happy hysterics over the end of Fried Green Tomatoes at Whistle Stop Cafe and I even burst into tears at reading the end of Kagura in the InuYasha manga. Why am I so emotional?

My first exposure to Jane Austen was Persuasion as a reading assignment in college. I hadn’t expected much, but it’s now one of my favorite books and it’s hard to imagine the end with Anne Elliot who had been poorly persuaded and her Captain Wentworth without tearing up a little. As with Fried Green Tomatoes, tears streamed down my face with an almost ridiculous vigor from the outright joy about what I was reading. I finished Sense and Sensibility tonight and, I’m not sure why it surprised me, but once I again, I found myself in tears at the end of an Austen.

The silly thing about Sense and Sensibility is that it’s one of my favorite movies, i.e., the one done by Ang Lee and Emma Thompson. I’ve watched more times than I can count and I cry harder at the end with each subsequent viewing. I think I’m just so touched by Elinor’s breakdown at the end that I can’t help but cry with her, so I knew full well what was coming at the end of this book and thus had ample opportunity to ready myself for the end.

Even with knowledge of the ins and outs of the plot, I still burst into tears and continued crying for another several hundred words and into the next chapter when I got to the same point of Elinor’s breakdown. As with most books, the image is far more poignant in my mind than on a screen and just reading the words “His errand at Barton, in fact, was a simple one. It was only to ask Elinor to marry him” caused me to take a extra five minutes to compose myself before I could read any further. I’m not sure why it is that, especially with Austen’s books, I’m such a punk when it comes to even remotely emotional literature.

I wrote 284 words tonight (Was your Thanksgiving okay?”) though none of them threw me into a fit of tears as did Austen’s. Still…aside from reading a book I knew I’d love from the moment I decided to buy it, I accomplished something extraordinary tonight. I watched no television and played no Rock Band, not because I was on a zealous quest to change my ways, but because I decided that I’d rather read instead. It’s a pleasant thought to be able to see definite changes in yourself, no matter how small.

Something or another Saturday, July 2, 2011

Since I’m on such a reading kick lately, I’ve decided to really put some effort into re-reading/editing Flight for it’s third edition. I’ve not looked at it, really looked at it in ages and I hate to think of it just sitting on the interwebs with all these spelling and grammar errors and looking very much like a fledgling writer’s first attempt at a novel. It will be fun to reminisce since I was finishing my last year of school while writing it.

I listened to some “normal” music today (Green Days’s Restless Heart Syndrome, of course), but quickly returned to classical and have been listening to it ever since.

I am, however, going to watch some Frasier for a bit before going back to Sense and Sensibility. I quite like the idea of reading all the time and look forward to seeing if I can manage to read a book a week for a while. Between my old Star Wars 91-book challenge and the 60+ books waiting on my Goodreads “to-read” list, I’ll be good to go for a while.

I wrote 328 words tonight (her grandmother and her sons could do the same) and have this nagging suspicion that I’m taking too long to get to the point with this part of the chapter. All I can think however is that I’ve got to keep pushing and pushing until it’s done. And, I can go crazy with my proverbial red pen.

Some action Monday, June 27, 2011

So, it took six days of no television and no Xbox before I finally broke down and started cleaning. I had hoped this would come earlier, but such is life.

Having finished The Silence of the Lambs yesterday, I turned my sights to Harris’ fourth novel Hannibal. It’s got only 3 stars on Amazon and the reasons for this are clear. I’m not yet a third of the way through it and I’m already wishing I’d chosen something else to read. I had got up for the bathroom and stared at my Kindle on the bed and wondered what to do. I could either go back to the boring book, or I could start cleaning. So I started cleaning.

I’ve realized in these past few days that Amazon product reviews follow certain curves depending on how good they are. While there will always be idiots rating a book or film low because it arrived with bent pages or because the shipping took too long, the majority of the reviews are more or less genuine. Since most of the reviews are about content, one can tell how good a book is just from it’s review curve.

If the curve is more logarithmic (i.e. going up and towards the right) with the bulk of the reviews being favorable with a few less being 4 stars, a few less being 3 and so forth, the odds are, the book is pretty decent. The trouble begins when the reviews are more hyperbolic where there are many favorable reviews and just as many if not more negative reviews with few 4, 3 and 2 star reviews between them. It’s rare that a popular book will receive a ton of negative reviews, hence the reason it’s popular, but when one can see that the negative reviews outnumber the others, problems are present.

Observe the curve on Silence of the Lambs:

…and on Twilight.

The curve on Hannibal Rising is so dreadful, I doubt I’ll ever even want to watch the movie if it comes on Netflix.

Now, I’ve not read Twilight, but that curve is a bit of a deterrent. The favorable reviews far outnumber the unfavorable ones, but there are definitely more 1 star reviews that 4, 3, or 2 ones. That’s not natural. Ideally, a good book should be liked by many, liked less by fewer and so forth as shown with the Silence curve. I’ve got Twilight sitting on my Kindle and I’m barely into the second or third chapter, but I’m afraid to go further because I know lots of people who love it and I don’t want to read and then lose all respect for all of them for reading rubbish. Not that I’ve not read rubbish books myself, but Harry Potter is at least a good story and more or less well-written…at times.

Enough about other people’s books…I wrote a ton today. Technically, for counting purposes, I wrote 389 words (against the chair in a huff with her eyes closed.), but when I look at all the notes I wrote for Jill’s story, I’m up to 8,203 words in a day, the Damen piece included. It all started with what was supposed to be a short note in Awesome note about how Jill should take place in a town called Georgeton (previously Georgetown, but then I saw there was, indeed, a Georgetown, Ohio), but after describing the town through Kyle’s eyes, I went overboard and just kept writing about everything that happened to him right up to the point where he met Sam and fell in love and then they get Jill. I doubt much of what I’ve written will end up in the final project for Jill, whenever/if ever I get to that point, but I just loved writing it. Kyle’s simultaneously like everyone I’ve ever written, but still the opposite of anyone I’ve tried to write.

How does a straight woman get inside the head of gay man? I’m not entirely sure, but I think I got very close to it while writing today. It’s certainly not as easy as the stereotypes make it seem, especially when one is trying very hard not to create just another stereotype here. I’ve moved the notes for Jill into a Word doc from OneNote’s chaos, so now it’s a real, official project that waiting to be completed. Today, the characters just wouldn’t shut up long enough for me to stop writing and I had another one of those days where I write and write until I physically can’t do it anymore because I’m too low on electrolytes and blood sugar. I love those days.

Back to Hannibal; I’m only reading it at this point because I’ve heard the ending was better in the book than in the movie and, since books are always better than their film adaptations and that film was god-awful, the ending is bound to be good. Hopefully.

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.

Seems, madam? Nay, it is. Sunday, May 15, 2011

I’ve come to the scene in Damen where Damen and Brit decide to read Hamlet together. It took me quite some time to decide upon each of the books they’ll read throughout the novel and, with the exception of The God of Small Things, the titles of have changed quite often. Hamlet, and the aforementioned title, are the two, however, that managed to weave their way into overarching story.

Even though it is a stretch to liken Damen’s predicament with that of Hamlet’s, but I still enjoy doing it. The father is dead, the mother has remarried and there’s something rotten in Hanby. 🙂 It just works out so well and knowing my protagonist as well as I do, I’ve long since known that Damen would sense an immediate kinship towards Hamlet.

I’m rather excited at the moment by how well the last thousand words have flowed for me. I’m also revelling in something between Elysian calm and the outright joy that comes from spending much of the day playing Rock Band and bumping my gamerscore. That said, I did not go to church today, which means I didn’t get any first-job work done today, which means there will be hell to pay tomorrow. With that said, I’d rather not think about tomorrow for the moment and just sigh pleasantly happy for the relaxation that this day has brought.

I wrote 775 words tonight (You can choose the next one) and very well could have written more, but after a day of playing Rock Band, Kinect Adventures and Lego Clone Wars…I’m a bit fatigued. In a good way.