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 |  Now my story begins in nineteen-dickety-two... |
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2 AM and I'm still awake, writing a song If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me, Threatening the life it belongs to And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud And I know that you'll use them, however you want to -Breathe(2AM), Anna Nalick ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** For Daddy, the real world gets fainter and fainter every day. -Homer Simpson Homer, Please Don't Hammer 'Em ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only **
If we shadows have offended,/Think but this, and all is mended,/That you have but slumber'd here/While these visions did appear./And this weak and idle theme,/No more yielding but a dream... -William Shakespeare, A Midsummer's Night Dream |
| I've been wanting to write more blog entries lately, but I haven't been doing it. I actually haven't been doing much of anything on WDC lately. It kinda shows in my lack of e-mails. I never had a ton of e-mails before, but now I have even less. I'm not doing as many reviews. Part of the reason for that is that I don't think I'm ready for a bunch of reviews like I was when I first joined. I've still got a ton of reviews to work through for some of things I should be revising. So, I've been less active on my review boards, in part, because I need to work through the feedback I do have. I considered withdrawing from the boards until I'm ready for more. That would be the smart thing to do, but for some reason I'm reluctant to do that. I'm also in the middle of creating a new novel and rewriting another, so it's not polished. I'm thinking maybe I should wait until I at least have them finished before asking for feedback. Then again, if there's some major problems with plot and such in the beginning, I maybe better off knowing that before I'm done. Not that it really matters. I haven't really worked on my writing for weeks. At first, there were some issues, now I think I've just gotten out of the habit. So, I need to make myself work on it. Once I start and get into it, I know I won't want to stop. So, why can't I get over that hump? It's one of those eternal questions for me. Maybe this weekend I have some good reasons. Thursday, I had the chalazion removed that I mentioned in "Invalid Entry"  . It differed from my last experience a bit. The initial injection of anesthetics hurt like hell. I wish I could say I didn't sound like a little wusey girl, but I did. Later, the doctor was telling a new trainee that there's something about the PH of the anesthetic that makes it hurt a lot. He said they used to mix in another chemical that didn't make it hurt so much, but since the anesthetic didn't come already mixed, they stopped doing it so they they didn't have to take the time to mix it. Yeah, if he had told me that while injecting me, he may have gotten a kick to the groin or something. I think they probably broke a couple of HIPA rules. Which if you don't know what that is, it has to do with patient privacy. They left the door open the entire time they were doing my procedure. I didn't really mind, but I hope for more sensitive procedures they shut the door. Not that it really matters, the walls were paper thin. You could hear everything anybody said. There was another old lady there for about as long as I was. She had an ulcer on her cornea. When she left, the doctor was telling the trainee that the woman was terminal with pancreatic cancer. They were having that conversation right in front of me. Now, they didn't mention her name, so maybe that means they avoided breaking HIPA. But I could still recognize her by sight. Enough to point her out to others in a store or something. Not that I would, but HIPA was designed to stop that kind of thing. I do think HIPA is bit too paranoid. I worked for a medical billing company and some of the rules are just ludicrous. Anyway, they didn't put a bandage over my eye like they did the last time. I thought that was weird. My eye hurt a lot as the anesthetic wore off, but eventually faded. My eyelid is still a little swollen, but not like it was on Thursday. I can't wear contacts for another couple of days. I feel un-presentable when I'm wearing my glasses. So the rest of Thursday, I did nothing but watch TV and DVDs. On Friday, I was going to start in earnest to revise Chasing. That didn't happen. I had to make a character for my friend's game that he ran on Saturday night. That took me longer then it should have. Mostly because I was watching Babylon 5 all day while I was doing it. I also got my new pair of glasses on Friday. On Saturday, we ran a bunch of errands before seeing the before mentioned friend. We went to see Watchmen before the game. I thought the movie was good. It kept the spirit of the graphic novel. I find that fans generally like it, but critics seem to be coming down hard on it because it did stay so true to the graphic novel.  That's what the fans want. They generally don't want some filmmakers to take great liberties with such things. Another thing that people kept mentioning was the blue wang. Laurie's breasts were shown, but for once, people are paying more attention to the wang instead of the breasts. Is it because it was blue? If we color genitals, is it more acceptable to put them in movies? Anyway, it was a good movie. I don't know how people who have never read it will see it, but I liked it. After the movie, we return to our house and our friend runs the game. We then go to liquor store where one of our other friends works, because something in the game involved him. And that pretty much took care of the rest of the night. And today I'm at work until 6:30pm. I think everyone knows how I feel about Sundays. I'm hoping that I won't have as many distractions in the coming week so I get some writing done... |
| Ug. It's Spring Break and we are not busy at all. I don't even have any student workers. But I'm still exhausted because not having patrons to serve meant I had enough time to go retrieve books from storage. I just got down vacuuming them, alphabetizing them, sorting them, and checking them off the list. Just moving that many books for 6 to 8 hours can take a lot out of you. And yes, I vacuumed the books. It's to get the excess dust off. There's no way to get it all. At least that I've found. When I'm dealing with all that dust, I just imagine unearthing some sort of bacteria or virus that's been resting undisturbed over there for years. Although, I'm sure that the dust itself isn't all that great for the lungs. I've sneezed several times today. And tomorrow, I get to start finding prices for the books. But that's a little easier and will give me time to peruse them. It has been interesting looking through all those old books. There's a lot of literature type things in this run. I'm in the 808 part of Dewey at the moment. Our librarian for the area was telling me she had to spend this money we were given for books. She estimated that the money would buy 700 books.  She said we didn't have enough room to add that many books. We do only have a teeny tiny space compared to the rest of the four floors that exist for the general collection. *Sigh* I wish I could buy 700 books... For the library anyway. I wouldn't have room for that many books.When I was little I daydreamed of starting my own library for the small area I lived in. We lived in a group of houses out in the country. A long time ago, it used to be it's own town and there is still one of those green signs with the name on it, but our address was the name of the county seat, not the green sign. But I thought it would be cool if I could remodel the garage and make it a library for everyone there. How many kids daydream about something like that?  I am such a nerd.  |
| So far, so good. Benn's fever broke last night and he's at work today. He's still not filling great, but doing better. He discovered that other co-workers either called in sick yesterday or today. I would think that should prove to his higher ups that somethings going around. It still may not bode well for me though. I don't know how long it takes to get sick. But I've heard that the flu virus can be in your system for two weeks before you can get sick. He keeps calling me today to see how I'm feeling. It's a normal Sunday. I'm tired and bored. It's Spring Break, there are no students to serve. And thanks to the stupid governor, I lost an hour of sleep because he thought it would be better if Indiana started doing this Daylight Savings Time crap. Fine, I get it. Some energy is conserved this way, but why do we bother going back an hour in the fall? We only get a few hours of daylight in the winter anyway, getting up later really doesn't make a difference. We spring forward, so why not just stay here? I read an article in the paper that says Indiana is reluctant to change and that's why so many Hoosiers hate Daylight Savings. I'm not reluctant to change, I just don't see the sense in it. We were a blue state last November, anyway. Barely. But we were. Anyway, didn't mean to go off on that. I've been really bad at getting writing done lately. I was going to spend Saturday and get a good start on revising Chasing, but with Benn being sick that didn't happen. He gets cuddly when he's sick. So I spent the day looking after him and watching Bride and Prejudice and Babylon 5. Not that I'm complaining. I absolutely baby him when he's sick. I know he's feeling better when he doesn't enjoy it anymore. When you're really sick, it's terrible when you don't get any sympathy or someone to care for you. Everyone's been sick, I don't get why some people are total bastards to sick people. Now, sometimes people milk it or exaggerate it, but you can normally tell when they are. I think I'm getting a little discouraged by what I am managing to write. It's pretty much first draft stuff, so it's probably not going to be specular anyway, but I look at and think it's nothing like what I've already done. I don't know. I need to get over that and just start working again. |
| Benn woke up in the middle of the night and rushed to the bathroom to vomit. He has a fever and he's already called in to work. I was up with him for a couple of hours. I don't know if he has food poisoning or if he has the flu. Since we pretty much ate the same things yesterday, I'm thinking it's not food poisoning, but I'm not a doctor. I'm afraid I'll catch whatever he has. I'm worried about him too. Where he works, they have weird sick day rules. I swear, he's never worked anywhere where they didn't give him grief for being sick. So, I don't know. He was cracking jokes last night, so he must not be feeling too bad. I should probably eat something. I hope it doesn't come up later... |
| http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/complected One of the 138 words I wrote this weekend was complected. Word kept saying I was spelling it wrong and tried to make it complicated. I asked Benn how to spell it, and he looked at me like I was crazy. Apparently, he had never heard the word before. But I've inherited or learned this mispronunciation thing from my mother, so I thought maybe I wasn't saying it correctly. But I was and Benn looked it up online and saw it was a word. I just looked it up for myself and Merriam-Webster had a usage note with it. Firefox seems to accept it as a word. As I've gotten more involved with my writing, I've been noticing odd things about words like this. I also thought trepidatious was a word. But most dictionaries don't seem to accept it. Trepidation is fine, but making it an adjective is wrong apparently. Yet people still use the word and I did find it in one on-line dictionary. Even Firefox doesn't recognize it. Anyway, back to the story... |
| But damn it's a good 138 words that describe my main character's living room. Small victories... My sister had a half-day on Friday so she wanted to go see our parents and she wanted to know if I wanted to go with. I agreed as it was the day after my birthday and we needed to get grandma's car. Besides, I don't see my parents enough. First, I had an eye doctor's appointment to go to. My sister was willing to take me and wait before we went. It was a standard examination, but now I'm going to have my eyes operated on for a third time. The first time was when I was in second grade and my tear ducts needed to be open. Somehow, they're being blocked caused my eyes to water all the time, so people always thought I was crying. The procedure I'm having in a couple of weeks, I had done about 4 years ago. It's not a big deal like it sounds. I'll be in and out of the office within a couple of hours if that long. In the last few years, my eyelids have a tendency to get chalazions. The easiest way to think of it, is a zit underneath your eyelid. It's more complicated than that, I suppose. Here's a link: http://www.emedicinehealth.com/chalazion_lump_in_eyelid/article_em.htm If you really want to know the details of the procedure to remove them, you can find a link to that as well. About four years ago, I had a big chalazion on my right eyelid and the medicine didn't work, so I had to get the surgery. Benn doesn't think of it as surgery, but a procedure. *shrugs* Now, it's my left eyelid. I'm not really nervous about it, as I've had it done before. Other than that, my prescription didn't change so I don't need new contacts, so I took the opportunity to get eyeglasses since the insurance will cover it and my current eyeglasses are an old prescription. I hate trying to decide on new frames. It seems like my face is only suited for very specific styles. Normally, the first one I find that works, I get. Unlike my sister. Every pair she tried on, she looked good in. So after the eye doctor, my sister was insistent on getting an ice cream cake or just a cake. Benn and I don't care for cake like most people seem to. So we normally get each other ice cream cakes. We love Dairy Queen's just because of the fudgey stuff they put between the layers. Our parents take us out to eat and I get grandma's car and take it home. That pretty much took up most of my Friday. Saturday morning we had to get up and go to the BMV to get the title registered and get new plates for the car. I had to get my license renewed on Wednesday. With all that and Benn's name thing last year, I've been to the BMV way too much in the past year. Saturday became the day of doing the stuff I normally get done on Friday, like laundry. Still, it should have left me with more than enough time to write more than 138 words. I think part of the problem was because I came to a place in the chapter that would be good for some setting and it destroyed the flow as I had to stop and think about it. I'm finding it's sometimes harder to get words to flow as I'm editing as I'm writing. That's become more of a problem since joining WDC. I'm trying to apply everything I've learned as I write and I know I shouldn't really do that until I get all out on paper... or monitor as the case maybe. The sad thing, I bet this entry is longer than 138 words... |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbVtbc_XzrI I'm not a nerd. Nerds are smart. -Milhouse VanHouten The song just came up on my iPod today and gave me a title to use... Last year, my birthday would have been the best one I had in years if some finical issues hadn't bitten me in the ass that day. It was a pretty serious one too, but everything worked out and added to the suckiness that was 2008. Last year, I had a bunch of well-wishes from WDC, mostly thanks to hailey. If I ever have the money, I should hire her as a publicist... My co-worker Justin got me a card and wrote a personal note inside that meant a lot to me. I still have it. I felt so bad due to the finical thing, I broke down and cried after I read it. I had to run to the bathroom until I was done crying. Everyone at work knew something was wrong. The head of the unit even gave me a heart felt offer of help. There was nothing she could have done... well, I suppose if she had had the money, but I wasn't going to ask. I felt so much love that day, I just wish I hadn't had the fiance thing hanging over my head. But a year later... so far so good. I don't want to jinx it. I was actually surprised to find lots of well wishes on Facebook today. Julie probably made me a brownie too...  She also has to give me a evaluation today. I find it some what amusing that we have evaluations around the same time as my birthday. This year, it doesn't matter too much. We were pretty much told that there would be no raises this year and we currently have a hiring freeze at the university. Which means that you would have to do a hell of lot to get fired, because they may not be able to replace you until the freeze is over. I keep hearing that this stimulus plan has funding for universities, so maybe that will change things. *shrugs* Anyway, I've been feeling much better lately... now comes the paranoia that something is going to bite me in the ass again... ah well. Have a good one!  |
| As a reader, do you really know what draws you into a story? What keeps you reading? If you're going to review, I think it's important to know that about yourself. I'm sure many people can reply to those questions in an instant, but I have to wonder if people really know themselves that well. For example if you're reading something and enjoying it, nothing about it jerks you out of the story, out of the moment, is it really important to mention that you would like more details in the setting? If the lack of them didn't effect the immersion, then should it be mentioned to the author? As the one being reviewed, I don't know if the lack of setting did this to the reviewer unless they state with their criticism. Sometimes, I'm not told if something actually stopped the enjoyment or flow of the piece, for all I know, they were just looking for something to comment on. I don't know. It's just something I've pondered today. I had another thought about reviews. Often you hear about people who only want to be told the good stuff about their pieces and they ignore or don't want constructive criticism. Is it possible that we sometimes give too much creidence to those that tear our pieces apart? Even though I don't always like to hear it, I'll pay more attention to critical reviews where they tear my stuff to pieces. After all, I tell myself, maybe the other reviewers didn't want to hurt my feelings. If this person is willing to kick me in the gut, he or she must be more creditable. That may not be the case at all. There are some people that just like to find flaws. They'll point out something wrong, when others weren't bothered by it at all. Again, we tell ourselves that the flaw founder is probably right because the others wanted to spare our feelings. At times, this is the case, but how often? I don't want anyone thinking I had any reviewer in mind when I wrote this, because I don't. It's just thoughts I've had as I'm revising. I think it's easy to stop listening to yourself when it comes what's best for your writing. Yet, I understand not wanting to use that as an excuse when there really is a flaw in your writing. I didn't write this to provide answers, because I don't have any. I didn't necessarily do it to seek answers either, just musing. And probably didn't articulate myself very well. |
| I had a pretty good sleep last night. The best I've had in awhile, and I haven't been as sleepy lately, but I'm still finding it hard to get motivated today. It's a gray and snowy day and I think that's part of it. It's just one of those days where it's nice to be able to curl under a blanket and do nothing. Yesterday, it was sunny and bright but I had other things to keep me from writing. I did get a couple of reviews in though. Then we went to Benn's co-worker's for more martial art training. We're still working on wrist locks. I think his co-worker has issues with seeing and causing women pain. He won't use me as an example and he stopped Benn from practicing them on me and took my place. Admittedly, he could have done that just to make sure Benn was doing it right. But he didn't take Benn's place when I was practicing on Benn. It was one of those things where you have to cause pain to the person to know you're doing it right. The difference is, you stop just when you start causing it and don't take it all the way like you would if you were being attacked. I feel bad on some level that I'm not getting as 'abused' as the others. I'm a big girl, I can take a little pain. I've been trying to get this one part of Strawberry Moon finished for weeks now. I will attempt to finish it today. I also need to get back to revising Chasing. Plus start looking into agents and publishers again. I'm not looking forward to putting together a query letter. I'm having a slight problem with revising Chasing. It's a problem I've heard the writers of The Simpsons talk about in the DVD commentaries. It can take months for them to put a show together. So they end up hearing the same jokes over and over again. After awhile, they wonder if the jokes are really funny or not and they want to change them. When they don't change them, they often find that they still work when they screen the episode with an audience. I don't write jokes, but I often wonder if the scenes have the same impact as they did when I first wrote something. Right now, I'm considering rewriting the opening paragraph to the prologue. But then I get a review that tells me it's fine the way it is. I guess what I could do is go ahead a do the small rewrite and ask a few people which they like better. For some reason, I'm really resisting the idea of rewriting it, but a part of me thinks it could be better, and other part thinks it's better to leave it the way it is then risk fucking it up. Gr. Okay, I think writing this entry has gotten the flow going like I hoped it would. I'm going to get some tea and start working on Moon. |
| We got off to a later than usual start today, so now I'm left with some time before work, but not enough where I feel like I can start something. Like I said in another entry, I've been sleepy a lot in the last couple of weeks. It's getting better, I think, but it hasn't gone away completely. I think I may not be getting a good nights sleep too, which might explain it. I keep waking during the night. That too could be the medicine. I've also had more vivid dreams, which might also be the medicine. The dreams are interesting, I guess, so I suppose that's one trade off. Although, my family has been in at least one a night. Don't know if that means something or if my mind is just retreating back to childhood. I started exercising like I was about two months ago. Which is pretty much just walking around the inside track here on campus twice a week. Today, I was enjoying it, so I think that's another good sign. I listen to music while I walk and my mind just brainstorms and I think of all sorts of crazy things. A lot of times, that can help with the writing. About the time I stopped exercising was when I started to have all the anxiety issues... I had stopped because they started construction on the gym and it was shut for a short time. I still feel I need to add more days to my exercise schedule. I need to start doing some stuff at home again. It's just I forget when I am at home to do it. I think it's something I need to do when I first get up, otherwise, I'll get distracted by other stuff I need to do during the day. When I'm walking the track, there's usually a good number of old men who are also using it. Lately, they've been passing me when I've been walking. I always feel bad that these old men are in better shape than I am. But today, I passed them and kept in front of them until I started to cool down. Is it sad or wrong to feel so proud at out pacing old men? There are a couple of them that jog instead of walk, so I don't feel so bad about that. I'm not a jogger or runner. I can see myself doing sprints if I keep the fast walking up. But constant jogging and running does not appeal to me at all. That's all I got for now. Have a good one. |
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