News

Yesterday was my last at my old job. I haven't gotten the library job yet but I did get a seasonal position somewhere so not only do I not have to deal with all the bullshit at the other place but I also still have some money coming in. I just got tired of constantly working myself to exhaustion every day for such little reward. So I'm taking the next month and a half to make a meager living at the new job, write, worry about holiday decorations and what we're having for dinner at Christmas, and also not have to work overnights. I hate working overnights.

I haven't reached my halfway point for my novel, but I'm almost at 20,000 words so with all the downtime I'll have the rest of this week (I don't work again until Friday) I'm feeling pretty confident about finishing in early December, which isn't the goal, but I would still be satisfied with it.

I think Christmas is becoming my favorite holiday. Obviously I love Halloween. But since July or August this year, I have been so excited for December. I don't know why. I'm just really looking forward to decorating, and seeing the tree, and baking. I'm most excited to make decorations this year. I have so many ideas. Ever since Ashley got me into Pinterest back in about March, I've been spending hours on the site looking at the DIY and Crafts page. And I cannot wait until I can start making things. I'm making gifts for the families this year, ornaments for the tree... When I walked into Target the other day to get dog food I saw the holiday stuff out and I got all giddy. They had the display of Christmas CD's where you can hear snippets of tracks and I heard Bing Crosby singing and I just felt so full of creativity and goodwill. It was amazing. And it made absolutely no sense to me. I was baffled by it.

So I'm really looking forward to this holiday that seems to have brainwashed me in the span of a 30-second snippet of music.

A Writer's Life for Me (a glance at my approach)

Yesterday I spent basically eight hours trying to meet my word goal for the day, and coming up with literally nothing. By the time Jeremy got home at about five I had written a grand total of, nothing. It was very upsetting. Than I remembered that I had started a story about a young monster hunter and her dad, and she's supposed to meet this other monster hunter and is skeptical because blah blah blah, and I had written two chapters and then put it to rest because my writing style is to write when I have the idea regardless of how well formed it is or is not, and when the words stop that's when I stop. I don't force myself to write because then I never like what I say. I also never outline.

A lot of my stories are about 800 words and then they just don't go on anymore. The story just stops. I stopped one in the middle of a sentence. I'm really excited to get back into that one, but first I have to figure out what's up with the dog. There's one about a mother and daughter and they're perfectly similar and dissimilar at the same time, but there's something going on with the mother and I can't figure out what it is, or why they're estranged yet they live in the same house and see each other every day and interact like friends.

This is what I mean. I never force it. I barely even take the time to really think about it. It's like a movie starts playing in my head, and I see the words so I write them down because I know they'll be important, but then the movie stops. I want to know what happens, but I don't skip ahead to the end of a movie or a book. I keep watching or reading and eventually the story unfolds and everything makes sense.

Back to the point. Last night I started copying the monster hunter story from my notebook, (I write every story longhand initially until one day I start typing it up and sometimes I'll go back to the notebook but more often I end up just adding new ideas to the digital version.) and by the time I had finished typing up what I already had and what I had added when inspiration struck me, I had ended up well over my goal for yesterday. Unfortunately because I had three days where I wrote maybe 100 words total, my expected completion date is now in early December. Which isn't so bad.

Yes I would love to have started and finished an entire novel in one month, but that isn't entirely realistic when you consider that I've never started and finished an entire novel in my whole writing career. (I guess not career, because I've never been paid for any of my work, or published except for that one really crappy poem I wrote when I was 11.) I thought I had once but then when I read it again it actually ended on a cliff-hanger and I had started a sequel (at 14, how precocious) but never finished it. It was meant to be a two-part story about angels and god and folklore and shit. I still have every intention of returning to it. I'm just waiting for the words to show up.

So the new goal is to try my very best, which is actually quite impressive, to finish this collection by November and spend December editing. But I will not beat myself up and agonize over it if I do not meet that goal. If it takes me until early December as currently indicated, then it does. I refuse to rush the words. And in the future, when I'm signing a contract with a publishing house, I'll make sure to include in the language that even though we may have a publication date set, it is very subject to change. They'll be cool with it cause people will love my work. The important people though. People like me who read and write because if we don't we'll go mad with our insatiable curiosity to discover new worlds and people and actions, or mad with all these words bouncing around in our heads, pinging off the sides and crashing into one another and making our bodies rattle with the vibrations of it all and generally causing a ruckus.

Here's a snippet from one of the stories, Warrior, about a race of men created only to engage in impossible battles on behalf of the human race. When the battle is won, they're put to sleep until they're needed again. They're handled by an organization called The Argus Initiative, which is constantly at odds with the enemy (duh), calling itself The Hermes Division (again, duh).

...

Possibly.

Maybe.

We'll see.

The first question you ask is how long have you been dead. The pause that follows as your teammates try to find the most suitable response leaves you feeling troubled. You touch your neck, your fingers groping for something; a chain perhaps, a scarf? But no, nothing. Your mind has gone blank briefly in your quest because they’ve answered your question after a suitable, dramatic, whispered discussion. You remember suddenly what you were searching for on your neck and why you can barely recall the faces, let alone names, of your colleagues as your fingertips find the scar; the one that you wear around your throat like a choker. The one that healed quite well actually, considering… The dark haired one, with darker skin and bright eyes that you’ve seen on another face, has answered you. Her voice is husky, like a purr, very low and dulcet, ladylike and with an unrecognizable accent. You have been dead for more than two centuries. Something happens and things go black. Story of your life.

Being Less Than Awesome

Had a freak out yesterday. At precisely 8:00 last night, I checked the time on my phone and felt my heart drop. I hadn't written a single word. The goal is to write, according to the graph on the website, 1,667 words a day to total 50,000 words by the end of the month. Thursday and Friday combined I wrote over 6,000, which you would think would mean I was on a super awesome streak. But no. All day yesterday at work, buying groceries, driving home, making dinner, I couldn't think of a single damn thing to write. There are 13 different stories in my so-called 'novel' and I couldn't think one effing word to put in any of them. I am angered.

This is my profile on the site, I don't know if it'll actually take you to it if you don't have an account, but if it does, then keep checking back in to see how I progress. (You'll only see the word count.) If you see the numbers haven't changed in a day or so, then I have obviously given up any hope of ever being a successful author and it would be helpful if you sent me a message, or text, or whatever and said 'hey Storm, don't be such a failure. you're making the rest of us humans look bad to any possible alien invaders.' (It's a thing.)

Today's goal is going to be small. Today's goal is 100 words. I've exceeded my goal for the first two days, and since yesterday was such a disgrace (I am very disappointed in myself.) I'm going to tone it down a bit, and try for mediocrity instead of excellence. It's a sad thing when you have to tone down your awesomness, but when the awesomeness isn't coming then you must accept your temporary less-than-awesomness.

Such is my life.

In much brighter news, my last day of work is the 17th. I'll be moving on to other things. Not the library yet, but the library is taking forever. I'll wait that long, and gladly, but in the meantime I'm going to start doing things to better my life. Step one is leaving a part-time job. Step two to be determined.

I made cinnamon coffee bread this morning. That's the end of that story.

I Spent Two Hours Trying to Remember How to Say 'day' in Spanish.

(Then I looked at the calendar, where it is plainly written.)
I know yesterday was the last day of October, and therefore the last day of Bold Moves October, but I made my super-big-awesome-bold move today. One that, like that other one I mentioned vaguely, I also cannot discuss in great detail yet. It's a step, in a long line of steps. But things are progressing. I'm excited and terrified. The best things to be if you're going to be two strong things at the same time.

Today however marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo, as I've seen it bandied about on the internet.) I believe last year I found a variation of this, and it was blog writing, where you write a blog every day. That is tiresome. I also don't have a novel planned. But I have that collection of short stories and I'm starting with that. Often times I find myself thinking of a concept for a novel and I start writing this grand piece, never an outline of course because god forbid I be a little bit organized. Then I hit a wall and I wait years before I go back to it. I have this one concept that I've been working on for over a decade now. I'm twenty four. Let that sink in for a moment. Imagine how awesome those first drafts must be. Just imagine. I don't have to. I've seen them. They pain me. But I can't throw them out because their are parts of each draft that I'm so hopeful about. I keep them aside in a cabinet, in the hopes that a story is in some magical way like wine and that the longer I let it ferment the better, and stronger it will become. Unless it becomes some retard-strong thing like a Frankenstein monster and tries to kill me. God I can only hope to write something so moving that it annihilates my private life forever.

Since the novel thing isn't a main goal for me right now, I'm just going to keep on trucking with the collection and see what happens. Maybe one of them turns into a full-length novel. Maybe I just finish the set and have a collection of short stories to shop around and get rejected a million times before someone is finally like, 'I'll take a chance on this.'

Bit of advice I found myself jotting down the other day: Write the story first. Then worry about whether people will read it. They will. There's always an audience. It may not be as big as I want but that isn't why I write. It's important to remember that.

Write the story first.

So that's what I'm trying to do.

Options for the first line of a new story, with the working title 'Dead Poet'.

• You will always be hungry.
• The blood welled up to a tiny little bead on her fingertip where she had pricked it.
• Outside the window soft flurries of snow are settling on castle ruins that nobody could bear to have torn down, or maybe they just couldn't be bothered.
• Everything I know about being a ghost, I learned from Beetlejuice and Pac-Man.

Everybody's Asking Where You Are

I can't believe I forgot that November is also National Novel Writing Month! Can someone honestly start and finish a novel in one month? Or even, in my case, finish one? It's already the 10th. I've come too far in the month. Why bother even trying?

I feel like I've just seen why I have yet to finish a single story, but I'm too lazy to do anything about it. I left work two hours early last night cause I wasn't feeling well and it's carried over to today a little bit. I feel like a huge disappointment at work cause not only did we leave early, we also didn't get the stock transferred in that we've been needing nor did either of us remember to check our bags before we left. So we're on camera just strolling up to the doors, turning the alarm off and then on, and making a quick exit. We could only look more suspicious if we glanced over our shoulders a few times anxiously. I hate feeling this way, the disappointing part not the sick part (although I do hate being sick). I told Jeremy I was worried that they would see this, only day 3, as my being incapable of performing the tasks they've set upon me and seriously rethinking their decision to promote me. He was like, settle down Storm.

I'm currently at the laptop with five browser windows open: Netflix with Gossip Girl queued up (for serious guys, and I have no idea why I keep watching it. I don't even care about them), this blog, my shopping cart on Haus of Gloi, my shopping cart on Bath and Body (they have some sweet sales going on right now), and a Google search for the correct spelling of 'queued.' I'm debating on spending as much money as my carts says I will on bath and body products. I'm also debating on watching another episode of Gossip Girl, where Dan and Serena try to work things out even though I'd much rather see their parents get together cause I honestly think Dan is kind of a jackass. Hey! I do care what happens!