This Blog is Moving!

Long time no see, eh? Well, very good reason for that, actually. It's because for the past month or so, I've been contemplating moving. As I'm sure you realized from the title of this post.

And I did, actually! From now on this blog will be continued at mindstride.wordpress.com.

I know, I know. I've been on Blogger for under a year. Well, I'll be honest. The only reason-- and I mean the only reason-- I decided to use Blogger as my blog host is because I already had a Google account and didn't feel like memorizing a new password/username combo. I really wanted a Wordpress blog, so I've moved while I still have few enough posts to make the whole thing painless.

I haven't decided whether or not I'll close this address down-- it seems like the right thing to do, but I only intend to do so once I'm absolutely, positively sure that I've tied up all my lose ends and no longer need anything from this account.

I'm still going to tag this post, because tagless posts feel wrong.

It wins opening!

Okay! So I said I got two new crown caps. They come from a pair of Mexican sodas I purchased for cheap at a nearby Food Maxx. I've only opened one thus far, so here it is:

I used Yahoo!'s Babel Fish translator to figure out what "gana destapando" means. I had the feeling that ganar is the infinitive for "to win" (so much for those three years of high school Spanish, right?), but other than that, I was lost. Yahoo! gave me, and I quote, "It wins opening". Wow. Thank you? I know that not everything translates from language to language all that well, but translating a phrase so literally (or just poorly) that the English phrase loses all meaning is kind of appalling, really. I tried Google Translate and got, "uncovering wins", which makes about a kajillion times more sense.

Anyway, I kind of dislike purchasing drinks in order to obtain interesting caps, because as I mentioned, I don't drink soda or alcohol, so I'm not actually interested in what's inside the bottle. That ultimately becomes a pretty wasteful habit. Plus, it takes all of the adventure and excitement of finding a cap at random on say, a park bench, or a college library carpet.

In case you were wondering, I did drink some of the soda inside, because I can't bring myself to waste the whole thing, even though I don't like soda. No matter how cheap they are (they were around sixty-something cents each), I just can't pour them right out.. They are both supposed to be apple flavored. This Topo Sabores bottle didn't taste like apple in any way, shape, or form. It tasted and smelled more like cream soda. That's delicious and all, but it's not apple. It still tasted about a million times better than the "orange" soda I purchased in order to get my first Topo Sabores cap.

I'll talk about the other one when I drink it, ha.

Fiction Update: Change of Setting

I've been thinking that perhaps I should try getting my five-or-more pages a day of novel work done on a laptop, rather than on the aging desktop computer. I think it would simply be more comfortable for me, and that's honestly kind of a big deal. It's one thing that keeps me in bed early in the morning instead of getting up earlier than usual just to fit in my five pages. I stay up late, so sometimes I just can't get myself up, and I'm unwilling to sit in front of that computer, in the cold room, on a cold chair. Maybe all I need is a change of scenery when attempting to get my work done.

Also been thinking about Looking Glass. Part of the reason I haven't been working on it is that, again, I've been spending a lot more time working on the laptop than on the desktop, where the story is located. I'm going to reread it tonight to get myself back into the mood/mindset, and then pound out chapter six... seven? Six... I think. Wow, I can't even remember where I left off, that's sad. I think it's chapter seven, actually, and it's a doozy, so that's probably why I took my little break in the first place (long, detailed chapters can be exhausting). Shame on me.

The only thing I'm concerned about is backing my work up. We've got an external drive set up, but it's connected to the desktop computer (and for a good reason; our desktop could stop working any time now). But I like having an external drive to back my stuff onto immediately, and I don't think I can do that with the configuration we've got set up now. It'd be a pain getting this PC laptop hooked up to that thing, and what if there are weird compatibility issues with the copies I do save? What if I find myself unable to open them in the future, on another computer?

I guess I'd have the same thing to worry about with the copies saved via our desktop, but the desktop is a G4, and I'm planning on buying a Macbook Pro in the future, so on some weird level that makes me less worried.

At the end of the day though, I really just need to get this thing written. I'm desperate at this point. If typing the whole thing up on this laptop is what it'll take, I'll do it.

In other news: New crown caps! I'll post pics later. :)

County Fair, Bookstores, Cookbooks, and Being a Road Hazard

I don't know how these long post-less periods occur. I'm always thinking about my next post. I sign in. I check up on my account. I read other blogs I follow. I think about things I would like to talk about. It just somehow doesn't happen. I think part of it is because the next entry, ideally would be a Fiction Update, but I haven't made any progress, so there's no point to that. Instead, I'll blather on about random stuff.

Went to the Alameda County Fair on the Fourth of July.

I love the fair, even though I hate amusement parks (and one of the biggest draws of the fair for some people is all the carnival rides). I love seeing the diversity of the visitors (well, at least out here), the interesting booths, the warm weather, the live music (county fair karaoke FTW!), it's all just wonderful. Not a huge fan of the farm animal displays, but...

On to today. I have a like-hate relationship with big chain mega bookstores like Borders and Barnes and Noble. For one, I love privately owned independent bookstores and like to support small business owners like that. You find really interesting things on the shelves of an indie bookstore-- at Borders, all you've got are the big bestsellers. No niche genres, no out-of-print books, no obscure, hard-to-find titles, no local or small-time authors. Mega bookstores are just kind of soulless. If I had more of a choice, I wouldn't shop at Borders for everything. Maybe just periodicals. Unfortunately, the nearest private bookstore had an owner who was just... hrm. Let me explain.

It was a hole in the wall. Dark, cool. A bookstore that could fit in the palm of the main library's hand, so to speak. The labyrinthine rows of shelves reached for the ceiling. The whole place smelled like the public library, but older and dustier-- if that's possible. It was perfect. I visited twice, back in the days when I lived with my sister and walked home from campus. The first time, the bookstore owner, a tall, thin woman brown-haired woman, didn't greet me when I walked in smiling.

She stared. She eyed me as I browsed. She never verbally acknowledged me in any way, not when I walked in, not when I left. Yet she engaged heartily in casual banter with other patrons, at least a few of whom I assumed were regulars. Still, that's no reason for iciness towards a newcomer. I'm not someone who takes bringing race into matters lightly, but I honestly think she had negative perceptions of me because of that. I had two options. 1) Continue frequenting the small store, braving her coldness in order to disprove all her negative assumptions about me, and have a nice bookstore to frequent. 2) Stop attending a store at which I am not welcome. I chose the latter, obviously. Why give her any money?

The second reason the whenever I walk into a bookstore, the nearest Borders in my case, I always... always... walk out with something. I don't understand it. I can't restrain myself. A trip to Borders almost always means spending money I shouldn't necessarily be spending. Take for example my latest find: The Ultimate Book Of Vegan Cooking.

I'm almost positive that this book doesn't contain any information I don't already know. I've been vegan for a little while now, and was veg before that. But how could I resist? Look at that thing. It seduces you with its huge, full-color photos and cheapest-vegan-cookbook-EVAR price of six dollars. Veganomicon is thirty dollars off the shelf-- thus, why I don't own a copy of Veganomicon (yet). The book I bought today isn't as thick, and probably not as useful, but full color photos, for six dollars? Okay!

That's Borders for you. They have a huge "Bargain Books" section filled with relatively cheap stuff. Four bucks, five bucks, six bucks. It's typically full of how-to books, inexpensive coffee-table books, cheap kits (like a sushi kit that comes with a bamboo rolling mat, chopsticks, etc.), and imports like this one. I don't quite get how that works, because usually stuff from other countries is more expensive, but I never claimed to be an economic wonder kid. I assume these books are Borders exclusive, in this country anyway.

This new book, printed by Hermes House publishing, is from London. I will admit, that's part of the draw for me. I love books from the UK for some reason. Something about the clean design, the use of Helvetica or Arial font, the slightly different language (e.g. "sultanas" rather than "golden raisins"), and the different measurement units. My first vegetarian cookbook ever was a tiny spiral-bound thing called Cookshelf Vegetarian, and it served me quite well. I bought it out of pure, desperate need; I was new to cooking for myself regularly in general, and didn't know what recipes other than my mom's to begin with. The recipes were simple but helpful, and the pictures were gorgeous. I'll be honest, I regularly sit down with cookbooks and just look at the pictures.

After Cookshelf, I bought another cookbook from the bargain section at Stonestown Borders, purely on a whim. It's called Vegetarian Cooking and Vegetable Classics.

Interestingly, it was published by Hermes House as well. Unfortunately, it's not exactly as stellar an example of vegetarian cookbooks; it has a chapter called "Virtually Vegetarian", which includes recipes with fish and other seafood.

I kid you not.

...What?

The intro below says, "For all those demi-vegetarians who just cannot resist fish and seafood, here is a selection of starter and main-course dishes that combine unusual vegetables and herbs with fish in nutritious and flavoursome ways."

Seriously? "Cannot resist"? Really? And yeah, that's a fish filet in the photo behind the box.

Whose idea was it to publish a vegetarian cookbook with an entire chapter on fish and seafood? I understand that they're trying to appeal to pescatarians. That's fine, but that's not vegetarianism. It has no place in a vegetarian cookbook, especially considering the fact that many if not most vegetarians are so for ethical reasons, and so the idea of not "resisting" is out of the question. If pescatarians want to learn recipes with fish in them, there are countless omni-centric cookbooks for them to choose from. Why pick a vegetarian cookbook for such an outlet? It defeats the purpose of the book. One picks up a vegetarian cookbook to get away from flesh. By that logic, I guess the vegan book I picked up has a chapter on eggs and dairy called "Pseudo Vegan"-- because some vegans "cannot resist" omelettes and cheese. Makes no sense. Nice work there Hermes House, -1 for you. Now I've learned to look through a book thoroughly before purchasing.

Something scary happened to me on my way back home. I was at a red light, and I was turning right. I paused, and prepared to make a right turn on red, which is legal after a stop, right? Right. So I look to my right. Three lanes, all clear. Left? Three lanes, all clear. I also assumed that the light would change soon, and that the people heading straight (in the direction I was coming from) would soon have a green light, thus making my turn completely clear and care-free.

Then I made an error in judgment. There were no cars coming from the direction that had the right of way, so I assumed I'd have enough time to cross all three lanes of traffic during my right turn, and wind up in the far left lane.

Wrong!

All of a sudden I see a Honda Accord off behind me and to my left in my peripheral vision, just clearing the intersection. It was careening towards me, and technically, it had the right of way.

Oh crap. Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, I thought midway through my turn, still in the middle of the three lane road. I gunned it and accelerated so fast I thought I'd hit the concrete road divider I was heading toward.

I've gotten too lax behind the wheel, and I think part of it is because breaking rules is part of what I deem "aggressive/defensive driving". I know there's no logic behind that, but it's true. In person, I'm not a confrontational person. I don't speak loudly, (though that's partly a physical thing-- I just have a soft voice) and I always try to maintain a certain degree of calm courtesy with others. So I think people don't always take people like me seriously when they first meet me, or actively try to take advantage of people like me. I feel like behind the wheel, I can't afford to be the person who's not driving defensively and/or aggressively.

But I'm beginning to see advantage to the paranoid driver I was when I first started. Being constantly on-edge means I'm less likely to put myself in a situation where I could get knocked around by some other car, like I did today. That is all. No more shortcut-driving, or whatever I'll call my current state. Just plain, simple careful driving.


That's all, I guess, for this massive beast of a post. Good day all.


P.S. Yeah, I know about the bad Paint job on those pics, esp. the first one. I'm working on a PC today, so *shrug*.

Empty Bottle Blues

Happy Father's Day, all! Love you, Dad.

I actually planned for Sundays to be Fiction Update days (or other regularly scheduled stuff) and Thursdays to be random, but darn if being all off schedule with my posting hasn't screwed around with the order of stuff. My last entry was a FicUp, and since I've still made no progress, another one would be redundant and boring. I would talk about Father's Day, but aside from the fact that this Father's Day has been very low-key, I generally don't have much to say about it this year. So instead I will talk about an obsession, because obsessing about things is what I do best.

Bottle caps.

Question: How do you collect beer bottle caps if you don’t drink alcohol?

Fiction Update: Stalling...

Things are slow. I've gotten back into my old habit of telling myself that I'll get up early and pound out my five daily pages of novel, and then failing to do so. I have, however, received all my books in the mail (finally) and will continue to read them for inspiration. 

I've also gone back to reread a little of what I've written recently, not just within this novel, but all of my fiction. As usual, this gets me really motivated. I am reminded that these works are worth finishing.

When things get more interesting, these fiction updates will be less boring. In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy the delicious chocolate cake I spontaneously baked tonight.

 

 

Road trips, anklets, and other things of note

Yeah, yeah, I know. No Fiction Updates, or updates of any kind,  in a while. It's due to a series of things occurring at once. The first of those things was the last Thursday I actually posted. I had too many (good!) things on my mind for days afterward to bring myself here. Then, I actually went on a small trip with my sister. I figure I'll talk a little about that.

A couple of Mondays ago, back between around May 31st and June 3rd, I was actually out of town. I went down to Southern California with my sister and niece. A couple of weeks prior she asked me if I wanted to just drive down and hang about. I love both spontaneity and road trips, so I gleefully agreed to go with her.

This particular Thursday...

This was one of the most intense Thursdays of my life.

An Apology.

I realized, as drizzle speckled my windscreen, that I was lost. My headlights shone into the vacant space in front of the vehicle and were reflected back by an intense fog. Lost. Figures. I’m new to this. I’ll always be new to this, I think. I’ll never do it quite like they can. The others on the road can tell. I think they can smell my fear through the steel.

I had begun to lose confidence in my map-reading abilities, to say the least. Actually I had been ambivalent about them before this night, but sometimes you have to throw yourself headlong into a situation without looking back—how else will you ever get anywhere? It gets tiring, alone at home with the reruns. You grow restless, want to feel some sunlight on your skin.

I knew I was in a familiar neighborhood. I recognized the warped street signs, the shadowed landmarks. But I didn’t know how to get from point A to point B, from panic to refuge. Frustrating, not being about to get someplace when you’re around crap you recognize, stuff you see everyday shoved in your face plain as day, like a joke with a rimshot.

You mentioned that I could call you. You hoped that I would call you. You were never subtle. I never thought I’d pick up the phone, until I found myself squinting in the dimly lit car cabin, thumbing through my contacts for your number as the heat in the resting car began to dissipate. I had assumed before that even being new at this, I would get along just fine on my own, reading my own map, but this night was different. Because it just was. And that is all.

You picked up, not quite believing it was me, and not quite believing I would ask you to help me find my way. To be perfectly honest, I called, not quite believing it was you, and not quite believing I was asking you to help me out with the map. Maybe it was the drizzle or the fog that pushed me. Maybe it was the darkness.

Together we talked our way through it, stumbling through awkward verbal moments and your recurring incredulity, a few heavy exhalations billowing into our receivers. I don’t think I really believed you knew the best route. I think I had just grown tired of going at it alone. I think I just really needed to hear someone else’s voice in that moment.

For a while after that, you would accompany me on drives and be my navigator. I have to say, you made it a point to help ensure that I obtained some kind of confidence, not just behind the wheel, but in all my endeavors. That is invaluable, and I appreciate it, probably more than you know. But this couldn’t last forever, and I knew it from the get-go. For that, I apologize. I regret wasting your time.

It is quiet now, in the cabin, as I drive down the road to all my familiar haunts. I’m not as intimidated by the warped signs and waning sunlight anymore. I’d rather be home before dark, but I accept that, of course, I will occasionally be stuck out in the dark. My only hope is that next time I get lost, I call someone as helpful as you were.

Fiction Update: Slowing Down to Read

Whoops, bit of a delay there in the updating. Anyway, here to discuss the latest in my novel attempt.

I've slowed down a bit, which is unlikely to surprise anyone that really knows me. I know myself, and I'm not surprised by it either. However, I'm not discouraged. My reasons for slowing down are actually related to my endeavor--I stopped to do some reading.

It's interesting that around the same time I began to have difficulty writing with confidence, that I also stopped reading as regularly as I once had. It's probably not a coincidence, either. This isn't to say that I haven't read a book in years, it just means I'm not always in the process of reading one book or another, and starting a new one once I've finished the previous one. This is tragic. If there's ever a way to gain confidence in your writing capabilities, it's by stopping to read literature and learning via osmosis. When reading books you begin to develop a feel for the language, the pacing, the way themes weave in and out. Reading is invaluable. I began to feel like I'd wasted valuable studying time, with my final exam date looming ominously in the distance.

Ode to Pancakes

I like pancakes.

No really, I do. I really enjoy pancakes. Breakfast ‘o’ champions, in my book.

Now that I make my own pancakes from scratch, I love pancakes. Strong, healthy, hearty pancakes are warm and filling to begin with. Krusteaz and Bisquick ain’t got nothin’ on good old fashioned whole grain flour (whether the grain you’re using is wheat or anything else). Add to that the triumphant feeling one obtains from mixing her/his own flour and baking powder and other pancakey whatnots into a giant metal bowl and you’ve got a breakfast to be proud of.

I like waffles too. We even have a waffle maker floating around somewhere in the garage. There was a point in time, maybe eight to ten years ago, when my family would make pancakes at least every weekend, because dad gone it, we had a waffle maker, and we could. That waffle maker taught me an interesting thing about the vital differences between waffles and pancakes.

While the convenience of having a machine do the cooking for you is, honestly, incredible, that doesn’t mean that your waffles will turn out perfectly. Waffles are a finicky bunch with unpredictable personalities. You have to measure your batter perfectly or you’ll end up with thin, brittle, waffle-like biscuits that will make your breakfast plate cry tears of condensation. God forbid those crispy misfits actually have holes in them. It’s one thing to have a waffle that fails to be crisp on the outside while soft on the inside—the waffle ideal, for sure. It adds insult to injury when your waffle is cardboard and won’t even hold your syrup in its admittedly clever square-shaped basins. Oh, the pain of watching perfectly good syrup dribble straight through your food, pooling beneath your waffle’s steamy underbelly.

No, it’s in those ways that waffles fall short of their syrup-coated cousin, the pancake. True, waffles have an ingenious syrup-reserving design. The late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said it perfectly: “I like waffles better than pancakes. Because waffles are like pancakes with syrup traps. They say to syrup, ‘You ain't going anywhere, don't even be trying to creep down the sides. Just rest in these squares, if one square is full, move on. When you hit butter, split up.’"

Syrup traps. Touché.

But how can one resist the subtle, seductive curves of a perfectly round, perfectly brown pancake? How does one refrain from salivating at the sight of an amber-colored drizzle sliding gently… gently down its smooth exterior?

This isn’t to say I always make the perfect pancake. I’d say I have a 40/60 percent chance of burning one of my pancakes, usually the second one since the pan’s already so hot at that point. Since I only make two, I pour them thick, and since it’s hard to check if a huge pancake is done on one side, I tend to overcook that side. It’s a bad habit, I know. If I worked in the kitchen at an IHOP my behind would be on the curb by now.

These days I like my pancakes best with agave nectar, Earth Balance, and a tofu scramble on top. Oh wow. Yeah, that’s a treat. That’s breakfast, lunch, or dinner right there. I only recently learned how to make a tofu scramble worth the effort. It’s not the seasoning that makes the tofu, like in other tofu dishes. It’s not even the tofu that makes the tofu scramble suitably scrambley. It’s the other stuff inside the pan. I used to think that well seasoned tofu was enough. Lightly seasoned eggs were enough, back when I ate eggs. Simple seasoning might fine be for other tofu dishes, but no. No, no, that is where I was misled. Tofu scrambles need glorious heaps of vegetables in order to be worthwhile. They make for a good opportunity to clean out the crisper. A sausage substitute or pan-fried soyrizo goodness will also serve you well. Add that, plus good seasoning, plus a carefully planned approach to what goes in the pan and when, and then tofu scramble sings.

I mention all this breakfast stuff because I bought agave nectar for the first time a few months ago. And wow. Wow. That stuff is delicious. It pours better than honey and maple syrup, works as a sweetener in lots of different ways, and it tastes milder (and in my opinion better) than honey. The only drawback is that it’s kind of controversial—some say that because it’s supposedly insanely high in fructose, it shouldn’t be consumed at all and to call it a healthy substitute for anything is completely wrong. Hm. Disturbing. There doesn’t seem to be a perfect sweetener out there. Until I manage to buy some brown rice syrup or some other alternative, it’ll still be better than so-called “maple syrup”, which is mostly high fructose corn syrup anyway unless you’re buying the super-pricey fancy-schmancy stuff that I really can’t afford right now. The happy medium, of course, was comparably inexpensive agave nectar, which you can now find in two-packs at Costco!

The bottom line was that I really needed something to put on my pancakes. The last time I made pancakes, I failed to realize that I’d run. Out. Of. Syrup.

Tragic.

That’s one of the drawbacks of both pancakes and waffles, at least your typical breakfast ones. They must be eaten with something. Trying to eat a couple of pancakes alone. It’s like the whole “seven saltines in a minute” scenario. After a while you just can’t stuff any more into your mouth. There gets to be a point of Peak Pancake. This is why I only make two moderately big pancakes at once, rather than a stack of them. I never have to feed that many people anyway. There’s another Mitch Hedberg joke about pancakes that I must admit is completely true: “As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and end the show strong. …You can’t be like pancakes. You’re all happy at first, but by the end, you’re sick of ‘em.”

Fiction Update: Catalyst

Progress report time!

Tremendous progress, I'm proud to say! I've finally, finally, finally been making headway with SJL! Yes, that's the novel project, yesyesyes!

There was something about the way I was feeling during the last update that made me feel particularly frustrated with myself. I realized that for years I have been over-thinking things. Aiming high and so hung up on the potential for failure that I get nowhere. On Monday, I sat down for hours in front of the computer and simply wrote, without thinking.

And man, it felt good.

So over the course of the week, I'm just making it a point to sit down every day and do a little bit on SJL, something, anything.  I remind myself that right now my focus is just to get it all out. I can refine it all later, that's what editing's for. It may all be a bit discombobulated right now, but it won't always be that way. If I don't sit and write something, then I'll never have anything to edit.

So having said that, I'm off to get in my required time spent with the project.

Plants in Pots: The Story Thus Far

So this is what my container garden looked like in its prime, around early July of last year:

Basil, cilantro, and rosemary…

…Okra and spinach, jointly, just barely sprouting up.

And this is what it looked between last August and this past February:

Uh, yeah. Lord knows what was living in there.

I went on a three-week trip out of the country last summer, and that is essentially what I returned to. I figured I should throw in the all-purpose gloves and plan more thoroughly for next spring. Well, next spring is here!

I did manage to reap a bit of produce for all my hard work. Four okra pods.

Four!

I’ve spruced up the containers for this year, and added a couple more smaller ones. This year, one big container's got carrots, and the other one's got a Roma tomato plant in the center surrounded by spinach (don't know if that'll work. Alas, I've got to conserve space). The smaller containers hold basil, bell peppers, a second tomato plant I got for free (Early Girl variety), rosemary from last year, and thyme. The rosemary confounds me; it died, then sprouted again out of nowhere despite the fact that I did nothing to it. Now that I've transferred it to another pot and care for it, it decides to shrivel up and die. What?

When I get pics off my camera, I’ll be sure to put them up, not that there's a ton of activity going on in those pots thus far. The carrots are sprouting some, along with the bell peppers. The Early Girl plant seems to be doing the best, but that's probably because it was a started plant to begin with.

Anyway, here's to hoping that this experience continues to be fun and rewarding this year.

Fiction Update: Fic Overload/Delving into Ideas

Progress report time again.

So, I've got to admit, I'm a little overwhelmed. I'm finding myself really itching to finish some fics I started a while back. There are four I have in mind-- that's a lot of fiction to be working on all at once! I have a lot of unfinished work, and after going back to reread them, I've gotten completely excited about them all over again. They really deserve to be finished, if not just for the sake of finishing them. There are so many of them though, that I kind of don't know where to begin. All these fanfics, on top of a screenplay and a novel. I'm spreading myself a little too thin. You might be thinking, "Considering the trouble you have with sitting down and actually writing, why waste your time with fics when you could be working on career-building work?"

...That's a good question, actually.

Well here's why I do it, regardless of whether I should or not:
1) Actually finishing any work is really satisfying.
2) I want to write, gosh darn it. And somehow, when I'm writing fanfics, I manage to do that. I feel so much more capable and liberated when I'm playing in someone other writer's sandbox, as contradictory as that sounds.
3) My finished fanfics could very easily be adapted into something else. Grouped into a collection of short stories, maybe? Some of them are long enough to be novellas. So who knows?

I want it all. That's something I've learned about myself over the last couple of years. I want to do it all. This applies to me in a lot of situations, now that I think about it. In this case though, I want to write a novel, I want to write a screenplay, I want to write fanfics to share with close friends. I want it all, even though these things take time, effort.

You know something though? I don't see anything wrong with that.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to try to finish all my projects over the next, eh, I don't know. Six months, tarting tonight. Really. I mean it. Don't look at me like that, I mean it. I'll keep a running report right here. Here's the roster:

Fiction Update/A Brief History of My Writing Background

Perhaps the most exciting thing I’ve been doing in regards to my novel as of late is to actually think about it. Okay, I take that back. I think about writing SJL all. The friggin’. Time. What I really mean to say is now I’m actually sitting in front of a computer screen and words are actually forming. All together, now: Wooowwww!

I just realized that I haven’t really gotten into any of my history with my attempts at novel writing. I guess I’ll write an entry about it. Like to hear it? Here it goes.

The first time I set out to write a novel, I was about ten. It was a mystery novel featuring a kid detective. I still have it saved somewhere in my labyrinth of folders, one of the last remnants of my childhood works of fiction. I actually wrote a lot of stories about this girl and her friends, but this was the only one I was pushing toward novel length. I treasure it more than I could express. This is writing of mine from when writing was just an uncomplicated pleasure. I got about… *runs to check* 27,180 words and 144 pages in, double-spaced.

Then I got older, reread it, hated it, and stopped.

Okay, maybe “hated it” is a bit strong. “Outgrew it” might be more accurate. I still reread it for kicks. Most of it is amusing, but occasionally I surprise myself with a fairly interesting moment of descriptive language. I sit there and wonder, “How’d I learn to do that and when did I forget how?”

I found myself trying again when I was in middle school, around twelve. I gave up the formulaic mystery set up and aimed for an epic fantasy, chock full of some of the tastiest fantasy food groups: magic, a faraway kingdom with a corrupt royal family, a brave (and precognitive!) young female protagonist, a handsome prince, war, outlaws, badass evil-slaying swords, monsters, *throws arm over forehead and sways* oh, t’was a fantasy tale indeed. That one was 35,024 words and 107 pages long (smaller font?) double spaced, and nowhere near finished.

Then I got older, reread it, was embarrassed by my writing, and stopped.

And that made all the difference.

I had dramatically changed as a person and a writer by that point. By fourteen, I realized that I’d been writing it like a twelve year old. Which is understandable, considering the fact that I had at the time been, well, twelve. But at fourteen? *Pshaw* No. No, no, no. Wouldn’t tolerate it. And I don’t think I ever recovered from the shock of hearing my own writer’s voice for the first time. I think it sort of traumatized me, like I couldn’t trust myself with my own words, I couldn’t trust that I wasn’t making myself out to be… unskilled? Immature? I don’t know where to pinpoint that fear. It’s a scar I still bear today, as I sit around wondering all the time if my writing is simply good enough.

I told myself I’d come back to it when I was older, that I’d give my epic fantasy series another shot once I figured I was old enough to wield that kind of behemoth. I still haven’t gotten around to it, but that of course is due to two reasons: 1) I obviously have other projects on my plate, and 2) J.K. Rowling. She kind of had the fantasy thing on lock.

I’ve pretty much been thinking about my current endeavor since I was sixteen, and really working to write it since I was seventeen. I already know what you’re thinking. “Hm, well that sounds like a recipe for disaster. I mean, I’m sure you’ve changed by leaps and bounds from when you were seventeen.” I guess so. Still, this story has remained largely the same, and I don’t know if there’s a surefire way to tell if that’s a good thing or not.

For some reason, this project has been the hardest thing I’ve ever put my mind to-- other than your typical math class, but that’s another story *cue lame ass rim shot*. With my previous attempt, I discovered the humbling truth: that absolutely anything I’ve written at any given time is susceptible to being completely, tragically flawed. It might be due to lack of skill (which I may or may not be able to help), or it might be a manifestation of my naivete (which I could never help on my own accord). Either way, it’s possible, and I worry about it even as I type this sentence.

What about your fanfiction, you ask? Well actually, maybe you don’t ask that at all, but it’s something worth mentioning. For one reason or another, my fanfics are some of my most complete work. Strange, but true. I think it might be because the pressure’s off when I’m writing fics—it doesn’t have to be anything, it doesn’t have to be finished by any particular point in time, or at all if I so choose. I play around with chronology and get creative with the way I present information to the reader. I have fun with my interpretation of an already established character, or real life person. I incorporate real life places and events. It’s a really relaxing way to write. One of them, as I’ve mentioned, is even novel-length already.

It seems kind of a waste to just write them and leave them to sit aimlessly on my computer, so I’ve done some thinking about what I might do with them once I have a hefty-enough number of them. I might collect them, rework some surnames here or there (to remove the fandomy elements), and treat them as a collection of short stories. Or since they’re so long, treat them as individual novellas. I’m not really sure what I might do with them, but I’ll type along, and I’ll find out soon enough.

Fiction Update

Made wonderful progress on "Looking Glass", the fic I post on an MJ fanboard I frequent (actually, it's one of very few I visit these days, and the only one I post at). I posted chapter five, which finally takes a look at the life of one of the three main characters (Brynne, the one caught between her fiance and closest friend).

It took me a little over three months to get that chapter up. At first, I just wasn't working on it. For some reason, it wasn't flowing as freely as the first four chapters (which I wrote and posted immediately between October and December-- a turnover rate that's rare for me). Now that I look back that chapter, I can see why-- it's massive! There is so much information and time covered in that chapter that I think to myself, "no wonder I was so reluctant to dive in right away, and no wonder it took me so long to finish once I got started."

Next chapters are only going to get more complex, so I hope this slowdown isn't permanent. Months spent between each chapter would be a total pain. Though, I'm pretty sure most of the remaining chapters won't be quite as long.

In other writing news, I'm working on developing a new idea for a novel. I know that's strange since I'm still working on my other novel, but this feels like a great idea-- it came from a dream. A coherent one, of course. I'm also wondering if it might make a better screenplay, but I haven't really decided where I'm going with that.

I don't really know why, but my camera doesn't seem to like cooperating with iPhoto. I tried to add some recently taken photos and things didn't quite work out the way I planned. This is actually a completely separate issue from the previous one I was having with iPhoto. I guess I just have to chalk it up the age of this computer. It's a dinosaur! ...Great, hope I didn't jinx anything... Anyway, I'm going to try the upload again and see if things work better.

Small Obsessions...

I love bottle caps.

There’s something so alluring about them. They’re like little metal gems. So varied, and often so artistic. I don’t think any two collections could be exactly alike. Some people collect paintings. I would, if I had the money, I guess. I’ll always collect bottle caps. Somewhere out there, a graphic artist put her or his time and brainpower into designing that cap. I appreciate that. We spend a lot of our time surrounded by art that we don’t even think about. Some people downplay it because it’s commercial art, intended to visually buttonhole us and ultimately weasel us out of our hard-earned dollars. I don’t think that’s completely fair.

It’s one thing if you bought the drink with the cap, but when you find one out on the street or in the grass, or best yet, someplace completely unexpected, then you start thinking about the story behind it. Where’d it come from? Who threw it away? Every bottle cap, whether you bought it or not, has a story, as hokey as that sounds.

I considered collecting them seriously once when I was ten or so. Maybe younger, maybe older, I honestly don’t remember how old I was. I had a gigantic brown shoebox in the hall closet filled with maybe thirty or forty old beer caps from brands my father drank. My father has always been an adventurous beer aficionado— every so often he likes trying small breweries for interesting flavors.

Most of the caps I collected were typical, ubiquitous brands you can find at the grocery store—Heineken, Miller, Michelob. Dad rarely had American beer, though. He never did, and still doesn’t buy Budweiser—can’t stand the stuff, ha. Yeah, there were a lot of typical caps there, but a few of them were real finds—stuff from tiny labels my dad purchased on a whim and would probably never try again.

One evening I looked inside the closet and opened up the shoebox only to find it empty. I scurried into the living room and called out into the house at no one in particular. “What happened to all the caps in that shoebox?”

Hands.

I'm still stuck on how to access the pictures that I took to accompany this post (and several others). That's primarily what's been keeping me away from posting. I hate being absent though, so here's the post anyway, sans pics.

*EDIT: Okay, obvious I fixed my picture issue. Here it is!

Before I could start attempting to learn the guitar again, I had a few things to do. I needed to fix my broken string (little high e was the victim of a terrible tuning accident) and get the sucker tuned. Now it’s in tip-top playing shape, seeing as it hasn’t really been touched for a number of years.

I also needed to pick up a simple book on learning, and a book of chords for support. Check and check. I still need a plectrum, but I’m not really playing anything at the moment, so I can wait a little and strum with my fingers. They were cheap, cheap, cheap, but they really do help. I should have bought these years ago.

But I sat around strumming a few simple chords, and I learned something—or, at least was reminded of something—that has completely changed the way I think about learning this gorgeous instrument.

I have some seriously small hands.

Seriously small hands.

High Tea

Today I ran a bunch of errands and wound up coming home with a few more things than I’d anticipated. Among those things was a Snow White tea set.



My three-year-old niece loves all things Snow White. I don’t know why. She’s never even seen the Disney film. Still, her toothpaste, toothbrush, tricycle, pretend cell phone, underwear—and now her first tea set—are all adorned with the image of the raven-locked maiden. I don’t even think she knows the Seven Dwarves exist.



Watching my niece play with her tea set makes me long for years past. We had a tea party this afternoon. We filled the teapot with water and she daintily filled my teacup. She spooned tiny droplets of “sugar” from the little plastic sugar bowl and sweetened my tea.



I instantly thought back to my tea parties. I have a much older sister, so I primarily had stuffed animal guests for my tea parties. The action figures and Barbies’ schedules were a little too busy for the affairs.



Ah, to be three.



Fiction update later this week.

Fiction Update

Did some writing this week-- joy! Although interestingly, none of it was for SJL or "Looking Glass". I actually wrote three skits for the show I'm working to produce for my college tv station. I'm proud of myself-- that's a pretty prolific week, for someone like me. I still have plenty more to go, too, so let's hope I can keep it up.

I've been getting to sleep earlier these days, which I'm hoping will open up the opportunity for me to squeeze some writing in early in the morning. I mean, check it out-- it's already February, and I haven't done any of the things I said I would. Heck, if I'd followed my plans, I'd be just starting the editing stages for SJL by now. Change takes time, I know, but it's nice to know that I'm actually starting to get there.

This post was mostly for the sake of making sure I keep up with this blog. I've got to admit, I'm slightly disappointed that it's not turning out the way I want it to. I'm not really discouraged, though-- again, these things take time.

Well, that's all for now. I really hope I manage to get iPhoto figured out! Peace and love.

Guests.

This is a complete and total rant. An angry one. I still can't figure out what's wrong with my iPhoto pics, so I guess in a weird way my irritation is the only reason I have an entry tonight.


I am so irritated. Ugh. I can't stand it anymore.

I HATE guests.

More accurately, I hate your guests. I especially hate when they invite themselves to our house on their whim, and you for some reason are not outraged because "that's how we do it in Nigeria".

You know what? I don't give a damn how they do it in Nigeria. I don't know if you've forgotten this, but they do a lot of crap wrong in Nigeria, and all over the place for that matter. I don't care whose culture declares this an acceptable practice. I don't care where these cultures exist. I don't care why they think it's okay to do it. You know what I think? It's rude, it's obnoxious, and it's inconvenient. And please, spare me the patronizing "Oh, they're not guests, we've known them since we were in Nigeria!" bull. I can't stand that crap. Why?

Fiction Update

Purposefully spent a little time away this time. I don't know what's wrong with iPhoto, but the pictures I wanted to put up for the entries I wound up skipping are no longer working. This upsets me greatly. Until I figure out how to fix that problem, I'm going to be largely limited to my Fiction Update posts-- which is really what I'm supposed to be doing anyway, so let's hop to it...


...Making some progress with the fanfic... not so much with the novel. That's pretty typical of me, actually. I've fleshed out the fifth chapter of "Looking Glass", and have been making some headway with actually composing it, as well. I also ironed out some details pertaining to the story's plot and universe. Feeling pretty good about it. So much so, that when I'm done here I'm going to keep working on it.


Hm. Motivation, motivation, motivation. I really need to spend more time with that manuscript. I don't know why some things come with so much more difficulty than others. In the coming weeks, I'm going to make a point to try to figure that out. 


Well, I'm super excited about working on "Looking Glass", so I'm going to take off for now. Peace!

Fiction Update/Babblings

I don't know how I missed posting on Sunday, weird. I wasn't busy or anything. Though, I have had a whole lot of stuff on my mind over the last few weeks. Things more serious than I care to go into detail about.


So the writing. I told myself I'd post about how my writing is going once every week, but I guess the fact that I haven't at all sums up my current progress (or lack thereof) rather appropriately. All my work on my novel and my fanfics has screeched to a halt. No progress, no posts.

I'm not proud of this though, especially since it's now well into January and I told myself I'd get a move on right about now. Now sure, I've promised myself a lot of things that I've wound up failing to fulfill, but right about now, a part of me feels closer than I've ever been before. Closer, like I'm on the tip of a breaking point. I can't continue on the way things are at this point in my life-- sleepless, anxious, brimming with self-doubt, tired of life with so much of it still to go. I feel like I'm going to do it this time, because if I don't make some headway and achieve a goal or two, I'm going to implode.

Admittedly... this isn't the first time I've felt "close". But I do think this is the first time I've felt like I was actually going to do something about it.



Anyway, here's the most completely uninteresting thing I've done this week: Bake brownies. I found a good brownie recipe on vegweb.com a few months ago. They're all chewy and delicious with the perfect crust and everything. Unfortunately, they stuck pretty fiercely to the pan the first time around, so this time, I oiled the mess out of the pan. I also doubled the recipe, because the first time around there simply wasn't enough gooey chocolate goodness for my liking. ;)

Unfortunately, I doubled every ingredient in the recipe except the sugar, since the cocoa I purchased happens to be sweetened. Biiiig mistake. It tastes alright, I suppose, but it's dry and crumbly and not at all chewy as the first time around. The only thing I can think to attribute this problem to is the reduced sugar-- I did everything else the same way I had before. In my most recent experiments with baking I've grown a new respect for the saying that baking is an exact science. 'Tis absolute TRUTH.


Anyway, off to linger on message boards. Peace.

One Glove

As I mentioned earlier, I’m an ardent Michael Jackson fan. There may be some confusion as to what I mean by “ardent”. Allow me to define it for you: I’m a sparkly-glove-wearing, fedora-loving, crotch grabbing, message-board-posting, memorabilia collecting, moonwalking Michael Jackson fiend.

I can’t help but to feel the need to post my feelings on Michael’s recent passing here. He was and is a huge part of my life, and I feel obligated to explain why and how to those who don’t understand his astounding impact. Funny enough, his impact on me is vaguely blog-related, but even if it weren’t, I’d still have written and posted this. I wrote it back in July. It was originally posted initially on my Xanga blog. Although I haven't been there in a couple of years, I felt compelled to place this post there. The reasons are explained after the jump, in the entry.

New Year, New Words

Happy New Year. Sorry about the absence. Lots of issues.

The following is almost everything I’ve written for my novel in the past year.

“What is this?” He asked, sliding a digit down the pristine margin, so afraid to sully the perfection of the printed page that his fingers hovered along the sharp edge and trembled with his restraint.

“My butter and biscuits,” Vaughn whispered with a faint smile. She reached over Bennett’s lap and dared to turn for him.

I seriously don’t know what’s wrong with me.

It’s now January 2010. Last November happened to be National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. While I technically don’t participate in the actual competition (I don’t have an account at the site at all—I don’t like exposing my work to the world in quite that way), in the spirit of the endeavor I’d like to try finishing SJL in about thirty days. I thought about starting at the beginning of last month, but that ship has sailed, and now I’m about two months late. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to wait until next month, no, no such silliness. I’ll start writing now, little by little, and ease my way into the hardcore “I only have thirty days to finish this” mode next month. New year, new start, right?

NaNoWriMo requires a novel of at least 50,000 words. That generally means averaging between 3 and 4 pages a day for the next month. I’m already about pretty much the entire month behind. Honestly, I’m not that concerned about that. I can pound out a good twenty pages in a weekend if I work hard enough.

My Get Things Done schedule:

5:30 am – wake, prepare breakfast/eat, practice guitar if possible…

6:30 am – work out, shower, moisturize hair…

7:30 am – write, write, write!

*Thinks* Man, five-thirty is early.

I would tell you what my novel (codenamed “SJL”) is about, but out of superstition and self-protection, I’m a little reluctant. I generally don’t discuss my serious work in extreme detail, not like I used to. Little details will slip in later on, I’m sure. I want to finish it by the end of the month, but it’s actually not the only unfinished work I’ve got going. Remember, I also write screenplays and fanfiction, right?

“Sincerely” is a fanfic about Michael Jackson. Go ahead and laugh if you want, but writing fiction about real people doesn’t have to be as creepy as it sounds. It’s about an un-famous Michael who happens to be a disenchanted San Francisco newspaper advice columnist who is considering leaving the industry until he receives mysterious letters from a “fan”. Meanwhile, he makes friends with an exuberant young graphic artist, Andrew, who urges Michael to stick with the paper. As they grow closer, the mystery of the secret fan grows more and more complex. It took me about two and half years to write (I was very on-and-off about it for a while), but this fic is roughly 81,000 words long. By NaNoWriMo standards, that’s way over novel length. How frustrating. It’s like as soon as I label something a novel, I can’t write it.

“Looking Glass” is my latest fic about Michael. It involves Michael as a high school art teacher attempting to resurrect an ill-fated relationship with a close friend, Donovan. He does this for the sake of their much-admired mutual friend Brynne… who happens to be marrying Donovan.

I’m writing other things as well, but other than my novel, those are the things that are at the top of my list and floating about in my mind.

I’ve organized schedules, plans, and notes galore, all just like this. They haven’t worked before. There’s no harm in trying. I feel like I’ve changed a lot over the past year or so. I think I’m finally, finally getting there. Maybe this time around I can do it. After all, we’re all creatures of habit, right? I’ve just got to get the right habits going.