There’s a blog here? What nonsense is this? June 28, 2009

Ah, life. You’re so distracting. You make me forget I have these lovely little boxes to put words in!

So yeah. Still alive, still kicking, still having more fun than I probably should. That’s OK, though. It’s been a good summer so far. Went to a great party on Friday and had a wonderful time. Getting to know some new people at work who I think are pretty awesome, and I’m still gearing up for my Amazing Birthday Vacation in August. This Wednesday I’ve got a little road trip planned with a good friend to go knife shopping; really looking forward to that. I’ve even lost some weight in the last month! Wasn’t expecting that. Now I am one of those annoying people who can’t fit into any of her pants ’cause they’re too big and is always cold ’cause she’s got no insulation. Feel free to mutter “damn skinny bitch” as you pass me by on the street.

Writing is going pretty slowly, but I’m OK with that. I have finished the outline for my mega-story, though, which I’m happy about. Now all I’ve got to do is write the damn thing. But I am making some progess, albeit slow progress. Yes, playing ungodly amounts of WoW is probably the main cause of this, but I really don’t care. I enjoy it immensely and there will be plenty of time for me to write once I hit 80 and get bored with the game. Unless SW: The Old Republic comes out soon. Then there will be absolutely no hope for me at all and I shall never be seen again. =D Heehee! (Speaking of which, if you haven’t already, go to www.swtor.com and watch the “Deception” trailer IMMEDIATELY. Do not stop, do not pass go, just WATCH IT. NAO. Thank me later. I accept gift cards and semi-dead flowers.)

That’s about it for me. Bye pretties!

Pretty as a peacock May 11, 2009

And as if by magic, the sacred bird descended from the heavens, alighting upon the wooden porch scattered with the offerings of many supplicants, and deemed them worthy of his attention.

As he supped, he was stalked by the stranger from the night, hunter of the winged, the spirit form known only as The Piedmonster.

Undaunted, the sacred bird displayed his holy plumage unto the onlookers, burning the eyes of the Furred One, driving away his evil. And yea, it was good.

Go with the Winged One, oh children, and rejoice.

Also, could someone please get this crazy peacock off my back porch? That color blue SO clashes with my outfit today.

Stay busy May 10, 2009

Yesterday was my dad’s 46th birthday. We celebrated by taking him out shopping once I finished my blessedly short shift at work (thank you to my boss for managing to only work me four hours on the day before Mother’s Day, I appreciate that a lot) and I did a little browsing of my own. Came home with almost $200 worth of clothing, which isn’t great for my Birthday Road Trip fund, but I desperately needed some new things so I’m happy about it. I’ve decided it’s time to start growing out of some of the more immature pieces in my wardrobe and start actually dressing like a young woman instead of a young girl. Also, finding jeans that actually fit me properly is awesome, even if I am paying more for them than I’m used to.

Writing wise things aren’t so great. I wrote down a story idea last night which is the first writing I’ve done in almost two weeks. Granted, I’ve been dealing with some personal problems the last couple of weeks, most of them due to massive fatigue, and I have actually sort of developed a social life recently too, but I still could be making a  much better effort to be productive. Maybe helping Justin and Terry with voice work for their podcast fiction will get me back in the working groove. It’ll take up a lot of my time, but I think I’m OK with that. Gotta remember I’m more than just a part time employee at a grocery store who plays video games on her time off! There’s more important stuff to do, and I don’t want to get stuck in that ugly rut of working myself to the bone for nothing then coming home and submitting to my exhaustion for ever and ever.

So yeah. Goals for May and the rest of the year: Write more. Even if it’s just little tiny snippets of story that aren’t going to go anywhere. (Gotta stop blocking myself off like that where I can only write something down if it’s related to a novel I’m working on.) Work more. Stay busy. Don’t put things off as much. Dress better. Worry less. And try to find ways to be less bored at work. Oh, and buy a decent pair of speakers for my room. Moving my computer into a secondary room and taking the Subwoofer of Awesomeness with it has left me with no way to play music in my bedroom…thought I could put up with it but really it’s very depressing. Must have music!! *twitch*

Go forth and perforate, my pretties.

There’s a difference between imagining content and delivering it April 27, 2009

Sad, but true.

Well, the flu has finally let me go. I’ve been back on my feet at 100% for about a week now, which is good ’cause work is harder than ever now that the weather has warmed up. It’s not quite summer yet, though this past weekend has certainly felt like it. Also, I need to work on my tan. And get back in shape. (not only did I lose weight while I was sick–none of my pants or shorts fit anymore, damn it–but I lost muscle tone too! Huzzah! =P) I forgot that when it’s hot, pushing carts uphill and into the lobby gets a lot harder. Heh. Though I’ll take a hot, steamy day over cold, windy, and snowy ANY day…

How are the writing projects going? Not great, but they’re still going. World of Warcraft has been sucking up an alarming amount of my time, usually in response to me being exhausted from work. Also, I have nothing better to play at the moment. (Can’t wait for that new Star Wars MMO to come out, though…mmm, it looks SO good!) But every now and then my guilt gets the better of me and I go back to chip away at my mega-story’s outline. It just keeps going. It won’t stop. Thank goodness this is an outline and not the actual novel, since changes would be a BITCH to make to this thing at its current length. Still, I’m excited about it. I think it’s going to be a really good story. Now if I can just write the damn thing.

I’ve also been thinking about maybe using the world I’ve created and just writing a few short stories for fun, sort of to flex my literary muscles and get back in shape writing wise as well. This was mostly inspired by my recent interest in the Metamor City Podcast, which has been sitting in my podcast feed for years now but I haven’t actually been listening to until recently. I got into Metamor City thanks to P.G. Holyfield’s Murder at Avedon Hill podcast, which is fantastic and had also been sitting neglected in iTunes for far too long. Unfortunately, Avedon Hill is almost finished so I had to find something to fill the newfound gaping hole in my brain…Metamor fit the bill nicely. It’s been really enjoyable already and I’m barely a quarter of the way through it as I write this. It’s also gotten me thinking about the advantages of having a whole world to play in, with either no or a very loose timeline/plotline, and just making up stories as you go along…I think that could be fun. Normally when I work, I work in long, over-planned novels, but I see the advantages of doing the opposite in this case. So yeah, the gears are still turning, they’re just a little rusty. As for How to Shop, it’s on hold for a little while as I find something else that needs ranting about. I think carts are still the thing that makes me angriest…nothing quite like watching some blind old fart try and shove a double-wide cart into a line of singles to make lose a little more of your faith in humanity.

I still need to get around to that website revamp, too…damn it. Why did I have to go with pink and black? If it wasn’t sporting that godawful color scheme then I could just continue ignoring it…why, past self!? Curse you!

Oh well. Life’s full of small challenges, I guess. Better get on with a few of them. Rock on, folks!

I’m not dead yet April 3, 2009

Going out for a walk. Yeah.

Actually I’ve spent most of March cooped up at home, sick. I’ve had a cold and the flu all in one month, with the latter taking up two weeks of my life. It’s still hanging on, in fact, sucking away my energy and forcing me to cough and hack up horrible things like some sort of old lady who smokes too much. This is the second worst sickness I’ve ever had, with the week of food poisoning still at #1. This one…this one just dragged on and on. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to get better, but slowly, I am. It’s been rough and I haven’t gotten anything at all useful done. (Sort of hard to write when you’re delerious with fever. Or trying to reintroduce your body to the concept of solid food.) But I’m getting my strength back, so don’t give up on me yet. I still intend on writing more episodes of How to Shop and I’m continuing to outline  my gigantic fantasy trilogy thing which was originally two separate novels and a random short story and has now become this hulking beast that may or may not take over my entire life. We’ll see how it goes.

Here’s hoping this entry finds you well, and please take it from me and don’t be afraid to be one of those neurotic people slathering hand sanitizer all over themselves and fretting about who touched that pen a few minutes ago. It’s  a dangerous, germ infested world out there, people. Stay frosty.

How to Shop: Prelude February 21, 2009

Most people think that grocery shopping is an easy thing, and they’re right. It’s very simple if you know how. Unfortunately, 99.97% of people were apparently born with their heads up their asses, and as such the process of grocery shopping has been greatly complicated over the years. To help unravel these timeless mysteries, I am now going to offer a blow by blow guide on How to Shop (Correctly). As I teaser, I present this prelude, which involves shopping carts.

Shopping carts are an amazing invention. Durable, easy to use, great for slapping advertisements on, and almost completely immune to all forms of abuse. (This includes everything from being rammed into doorways to projectile vomit) Unfortunately, they have not yet invented the shopping cart that will wheel itself back into the store once you are finished unloading your groceries into your car. Unless you are kind enough to return the cart to the lobby from which it came, or have a friendly grocery store employee help you to your car, you are left with only one option: Placing the cart into a nearby corral so that it may be picked up by an employee at a later date and shuttled back into the lobby where the whole process may begin again.

Some stores have fancy machines that do this for you, but I live in the South. We’re made of sterner stuff than that, and we don’t need no fancy technological thingamajigs to do our cart pushing for us. We’ve got people for that! Also, we’re really, really dumb and forgot how to turn the damn thing on.

So. You’ve gotten your groceries, put them in your car, and placed a cart in the corral. You leave the parking lot, your mission accomplished. Excellent. Have a nice day. Now, here comes a helpful employee to retrieve the carts that have been left behind by individuals such as yourself! The employee, either in an effort to be efficient or to show off, takes anywhere from six to ten carts, lines them up in a row, and begins to push them back inside the store. Granted, this is an uphill journey, but with enough momentum anything is possible! Unfortunately, momentum is a cruel mistress. Once on her way she is not easily dissuaded, which means that anything in front of you is doomed to be squashed underneath the collective force of these heavy carts. “Oh noes!” you say. “What ever shall I do?”

It’s simple. First, here is a list of things NOT to do.

- Do NOT walk in front of the carts. Contrary to popular rumor, they are not held together by magic and will fly apart at the slightest disruption in aforementioned momentum, hitting you in the process. Also, despite their best efforts, the helpful employee pushing said carts is helpless to do anything about this. Unless the helpful employee is secretly Mr. Fantastic.

- Do NOT place stray carts in the way of the helpful employee. This is especially important in the lobby, where the new carts are rejoining their metallic brethren. They cannot return to their families if you have placed a stray cart in the way. More to the point, why have you abandoned this poor creature in the middle of the road, to be run over by its friends and relatives? Why, Shopper? This action can only lead to pain and suffering, and as we all know, that leads to the Dark Side. I realize they have cookies and all, but seriously. It’s mean.

- Do NOT attempt to run over the helpful employee with your car. Generally speaking, employees of any profession are deathly allergic to being flattened underneath several tons of machinery and have no compunction about fucking up your paint job if it means we get to escape with our lives. Keep that in mind.

- Do NOT stand in the way of the helpful employee while getting a cart to begin your shopping experience. Again, I must stress, carts are not held together with super strong strips of velcro, magic, super glue, or the karmic energy of the universe. If you are standing in front of a row of oncoming carts while getting your cart, (and perhaps your cell phone, debit card, or compact to make sure that your hair is oh so perfect just in case you meet your One True Love over the broccoli) chances are good you will be hit by the oncoming carts; again in spite of the best efforts of the helpful employee who has just pushed eight heavy metallic carts uphill from halfway across the parking lot. Stopping that much momentum is a tiring experience, not to mention difficult. Please be considerate!

- Do NOT assemble barbecque sets and then place them in such a way that they come within mere inches of you every time you push in more than two carts. I’m looking at you, Mr. Manager. It’s February. Nobody wants to barbecque anyway.

- Do NOT park in front of the entrance to the store. Contrary to popular belief, carts are not ninjas in disguise. They are objects with a certain size and mass that cannot be changed. (At least, not without a flamethrower.)  Therefore, they are not able to transform themselves and flow effortlessly through the tiny, tiny hole you have left available for people to move through while you unload your aged human cargo next to the front doors. Just saying.

- Do NOT assume all carts are the same shape and size. Because they aren’t. If you are unsure what size and shape your cart is, simply look at it. If your brain and both eyes are functioning, you should be able to discern this difference with ease.

- Do NOT push carts of one size into carts of another size. This will cause the next helpful employee to encounter said carts to swear loudly, exposing nearby children to levels of profanity they thought they could only find at home, thus shocking them and sending them into comas that could last for up to a week. Please, think of the children.

And, finally…

- Please DO feel free to tip any helpful employees you see pushing carts into the store. This is a much harder job than bagging your groceries and carrying them to the car, and honestly, at this point they could probably use the pick-me-up.

********

That concludes this How to Shop prelude. I hope you enjoyed it and were able to take away some useful tips for the next time you head down to the corner market. Also, if you are someone who has broken any of the above rules, please do the world a favor and die quietly in your sleep tonight! Have a nice day and please come see us again! =D

The world doesn’t revolve around [insert name here] February 10, 2009

OK, so today was better than yesterday. Nobody got punched in the face and I actually had fun for most of the day. Thank goodness for fun new audio equipment and the Bad Day/Good Day effect.

Unfortunately, I’m still hitting a wall where my writing is concerned. This is especially frustrating because I’d hoped to spend these three days off working and enjoying myself. Instead I’ve been mostly sitting in my room playing Mass Effect. I don’t feel guilty over this, because honestly after the crap that happened yesterday and how “ugh” I feel today, I deserve some down time, but I would like to write something. Especially since this is the same story where one of the characters just HAD to appear and bug the hell out of me until I started working on it, instead of waiting for me to finish my other WiPs like a good boy. So  now I’ve got three WiPs I’m involved with now. One I’m bored with, the other I’ve written myself into a total corner with, and this one…well, I know what happens next, but I’ve discovered a small problem. I realized yesterday that all my other characters literally revolve around my protagonist. Maybe this doesn’t sound so bad, but I think it is. How shallow is that? These characters are so weak that they can’t exist unless that one special person is available to do something? Screw that. These people are supposed to be real. Real people don’t do that. (Well, some of them do, but even they occasionally have motivations and desires of their own) So I’ve been beating my head against an invisible wall trying to figure out what the hell these people are doing on their “off” time, before they meet the protagonist and become entwined in her struggles. I haven’t really been having much luck. Even worse, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of precedent for this. If you think about it, about 90% of all stories have characters who wait until the protagonist appears before they start existing and moving forward with their lives. Sure, I could do the same thing and get away with it, but I don’t think that’s right. These characters–this book–is too important to me for that. (Yes, it’s one of those stories.) Yes, the protagonist is important. Yes, the other characters are basically going to follow her path once she appears. But before then? They still exist. They’re still out there, roaming the stars, doing their thing.

The only problem is figuring out what the hell that thing is.

Maybe the past few days have simply been too stressful, but I feel like I’m slogging through mud with this one. I know I’ll get there eventually, but it’s hard going in the meantime. At the moment I’m scribbling some notes about their individual motivations (cue cheesy acting joke about “what’s my MOTIVATION here” in 3…2…1…) and hoping that something comes out of that, but I thought I’d take a quick break and make a note about this. It’s important to remember for future works, not only because I could have avoided this if I’d simply outlined some motivations ahead of time, but because I think it’s vital to always strive to make each character in your book everything that they can be, even if some of that stuff happens “off camera”. No, I’m not going to spend the entire book following every nuance of their lives, but I would at least like them to seem like they existed before the protagonist wanders into their lives. And honestly, I am astonished that I never thought of doing that before. Duh, Amanda. Duh.

I think maybe this is another symptom of that dread disease, Lazy Writing. It goes right up there with “Not Having Characters Do What They Should” and “Not Being Hard Enough On Your Characters”. My protagonist is not a god. She does not create people and breathe life into them as she goes. She’s a scared little girl who’s in over her head and runs into people who, it just so happens, can help her out with that last part. But if I write the book with the mindset that these other people don’t exist until she shows up, then are my readers going to pick up on that? I think so. I think it’s the kind of flaw that starts out small and then blossoms as time goes by, creating a weak story and even weaker characters. Maybe I’m wrong. I’ll put something in here later on if I am. But right now, I think I’ve finally hit something worth taking note of. And hey, even if I never actually finish this story, (with my track record it’s entirely possible) at least I’ve learned that much, right?

Now, if only I could think of a solution for that lovely corner I’ve painted myself into with Dreamfall…

Stop waking up in the morning February 10, 2009

Today sucked. Really, really sucked. This level of suckage is not supposed to happen on my days off, but apparently the universe decided to take a crap on the heads of my entire family today. My parents got stuck in roadblocks and behind crazy drivers, and I…well, I managed to break  something, messed up pretty much everything I tried to cook, had a headache all day long,  ran into a brick wall in all of my writing endeavors, and to top it all off got to watch as something I have been looking forward to for a month now got completely and totally crushed thanks to someone else’s laziness and ineptitude. Not to mention it hurt a friend of mine, who has been looking forward to the same thing as I have and now is going to be stuck at home with nothing to do.  The worst part of it is, this all could have been prevented. I hate it when preventable things go wrong. It pisses me off. And I am very pissed off right now. I’m angry that I don’t get to go with my friend. I’m angry that he doesn’t get what he wants. I’m angry that I keep running in to parent after parent after freaking parent who don’t give a flying fuck about their children. What is wrong with you people, anyway?! If you’re going to have kids then at least do the decent thing and give a crap about them! And not in the “oh I must micro-manage every aspect of their lives and make them hate me” sort of way. If you find yourself saying “do as I say not as I do” then here’s a quick newsflash: YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG. Nothing you do with that kind of attitude sticks anyway. It just makes them hate you more, and when you finally run out of time and they’re old enough to escape then guess what? Off they go into the world, totally unprepared, ready to do themselves unimaginable harm just to get away from you. Great job, asswipe! You go and pat yourself on the back for that one.

So yeah. I’m pissed. Really, really pissed. Tomorrow had better be an improvement over today or I swear I WILL find someone and punch them in the face. Thank you, Oh Invisible Reader Who Lives in My Imagination, for putting up with my rant. I feel marginally better now.

Oh, and as a side note, if anybody finds themselves in possession of a ticket for the upcoming Shinedown concert in Raleigh, NC, and you don’t want it anymore: I will buy it. As a tip you will receive my undying gratitude and affection. Just saying.

A lesson learned January 25, 2009

Just realized two things.

1) If I’m going to stay up super late and play video games, I might as well stay up super late and write instead. It’s more productive and has about the same effect. Plus it doesn’t make my dreams as…volatile.

2) I’m a very lazy writer. I very rarely do what I need to do with the story or characters because on a subconscious level I wasn’t even aware of until about ten minutes ago, I think it’s too hard, so I don’t go there. Occasionally I’ll have the energy, so I’ll set out on a path that’s more adventurous, but if I have to stop and come back to it later, all that energy is lost and I start meandering again. But all in all it comes down to one thing: My writing is weak because I’m lazy.

Possibly, all this comes from inexperience and spending 90% of my time avoiding the actual act of writing, but now I suddenly understand what I’m doing wrong. Not only am I taking the easier path and avoiding the harder one, but I’m not listening to my characters. Their foundations are there, but as soon as I’m done building them I abandon any extra work by just turning them into vessels for me to vent through. Whatever kind of mood I’m in dictates their personalities and actions. If I’m angry, then they’re aggressive and bicker a lot. If I’m sad, then there’s very little dialogue and they spend a lot of time moping or being introspective about their collective plight. If I’m happy then I’m usually too busy being happy to write, so I’m not really sure what comes through with that one.  My characters can literally change personalities in the span of a paragraph depending on where I last left off. Or worse, they display no change at all, caught up in a never ending loop of dialogue, covering the same ground over and over again, worrying pointlessly about things they can’t change, and generally going in circles.

(And yes, I am keenly aware of how perfectly that describes how I am on an almost daily basis.)

I actually came to this realization by watching television, believe it or not, as I sat there shouting angrily at the characters since I felt they weren’t acting realistically enough. In fact, with this particular show, a lot of the characters–especially the main one–seem to vacillate between being calm, collected individuals to completely freaking out on their friends, relatives, lovers, etc., for no apparent reason. Then they run off and do something completely irrational that gets them into trouble, which I guess is the only plot device the writers could think of to move things along because it happens a lot. If they exercised a little restraint here and there, they’d be a lot better off. But no. We have to all run around like chickens with our heads cut off doing stupid things and following our feelings. Bottle your fucking feelings already and get on with things the way they need to be gotten on with. You can have emotions later. But then I’ll be damned if I didn’t turn around and start doing the same damn thing with my WiP. I get stuck in this weird sort of tunnel vision and before I know it, all the characters are the same, going through the motions of being “alive” because I’m too lazy to make them do what they’d do if they really *were* alive. I had basically put little, diluted bits of myself into each of my characters and it’s really been screwing up my writing!

I’m glad I’ve finally figured out what my problem is, though of course this doesn’t make things any easier. From now on I’m constantly going to have to make sure I don’t take the easy way out, and that’s going to make writing more difficult. But at least I’ll be doing something. I’ve gotten really sick of not doing anything lately. Time for that to change! And if you’re like me, take a second to look at your work and ask yourself if maybe you’re not making the same mistake I am. Really get in touch with your characters. Think like them. Do whatever you’ve got to do to accomplish this, but make sure you do it. I’ll make notes as I go. Hopefully this really will help me improve my writing skills.

Save me from this wasted life January 19, 2009

Today sucked. There’s no other way to describe it. As usual, yesterday was awesome, so naturally the universe coughed up a truly awful shift for me today. Thanks, universe. What exactly did you have for lunch, anyway?

Bright spot: My good friend with the warm car and loud music. If he reads this he’ll know who he is. (He’ll also probably never speak to me again, but I wouldn’t hold it against it him.) He is comprised entirely of win. Thank you.

And now that I’m home, there’s nothing left to do but listen to good music while I debate whether to write or to fire up a video game and shoot stuff. Decisions, decisions. Though no matter what I pick, I have to wait for Buckcherry to finish ripping.

Why yes, this was an entirely useless blog post. What are you going to do about it, exactly?