Wednesday, April 9, 2014

April 2014

  Say to me, "April showers bring May flowers" and I'll laugh. Where I'm from, it rains more in May than in April, which means flowers start blooming largely in June.  One of the reasons why I love June. It's neither too cold nor too hot (though, living in the Convergence Zone can make the weather go back and forth as well), so your nose isn't frozen numb and neither is your sense of smell engulfed in the stench of sweat. It's the best time to smell the flowers and enjoy the (mostly mild) weather.
  It's also when the bleeding heart blooms, but sadly, I live in an apartment in the city where trains are howling day and night and so are the cars that pass by. So I can't have a successful garden. It just isn't the same when your plants are so beaten down by noise, light, and air pollution that they grow stunted. One day, one day....
  Oh yeah! April Fools Day? Okay, so I'm not a true fanatic of that day, so I leave little surprises instead of lies/jokes that freak people's minds out or cause pain or ear damage: The night before, I dropped several drops of green food coloring in the toilet tank. In the early morning, when my mom gets up to go to work, she naturally uses the bathroom. Get this: When she flushed, the green food coloring came out into the bowl, making her wonder what she ate that night. When she knew that she didn't eat anything especially odd, she experimentally flushed again. Then she knew it was an April Fools prank. (Win!) But then she left a gazillion things for me to find. The cookie jar was upside-down, a Kermit the Frog stuffed toy was sitting in the hallway & staring into the bedroom (I'm sooo glad she didn't use her antique Peewee Herman toy!), and 3 Chicken of the Sea tuna cans were on the bathroom counter with a sign on the door: Chicken Room. Those were fairy lame. But just when I thought I found all of them (there were so many others I didn't mention), she got me with the fake lizard hanging by its tail in the fridge. Yeah. My family's lame. Hope yours was safe and eventful!

  Uh oh.
  So I got a little stuck (okay, so it was writer's block!) with my book lately, so I started writing a summary containing information regarding some "mildly insignificant" characters. The first character was a page long, but then, something happened where I got so involved with the next character that I incidentally ended up continuing where I was stuck on in the book. (Win!) Unfortunately, it's a little harder than I thought trying to focus back on my main characters (I made the "mildly insignificant" character a little too important). I'm at 23 pages. Other downfall: I haven't been keeping track of how much I've been writing each night in this "summary". Soooo, there's going to be 8 days of blank spots in the writing log.
  But that's okay. I did that in the beginning of writing this book. In fact, what I thought I was doing was writing a summary of the 3rd book, but then it turned into writing the actual book. I still have "summary" in the title of the documents.
  Every writer has flaws and things to work on. I used to have such poor writing skills, you'd never have thought I'd ever end up as a writer. (At age 13, I still didn't know how to write in paragraphs, my grammar was poor, my spelling was terrible, and things were everywhere in the way that nothing hardly made sense.) These days, it's writing (or rather, staying focused on writing) summaries and plots, making them short and sweet, and I've lately been noticing I need a wider vocabulary.
  So, yeah. If you're writing and think that you're terrible, just remember: Even the best writers have some sort of flaws. But we can all overcome them and improve ourselves. Or learn to find a way to work around them. Some writers are so addicted to caffeine, they can't work without it. Other writers are always so stuck with writer's block, they think something's wrong with themselves. Still others feel that there's so many demands in their life, that they don't have any time to write anymore (<-- To those who relate to this one, I once met a writer whose strict rule was to only write 5 minutes a day, and although I personally can't find myself doing that, she's written 3 books. Even the smallest amounts of daily writing adds up.) So, keep writing. Become whatever you dream to be, even if what you dream isn't in reality. ;)

Words Written      Difference           Words Total         Date        Time Stopped       Day
Each Time             From Last           (So far)
___________________________________________________________________________
                                                                                     2                                        146
                                                                                     3                                        147
                                                                                     4                                        148
                                                                                     5                                        149
                                                                                     6                                        150
                                                                                     7                                        151
                                                                                     8                                        152
                                                                                     9                                        153
                                                                                     10                                      154
472                    (-155)                301,632                        15          4:21 AM               155
882                   (+410)                302,514                        16          5:08 AM                156
3,885                (+3,003)             306,399                       *17         5:00 AM                157
3,685                (-200)                 310,084                       *18         3:43 AM                158
18,472              (+14,787)           328,556                        *19         3:57 AM                159
902                   (-13,885)            329,458                         20         2:35 AM                160
682                   (-220)                 330,140                         21         3:44 AM                161
1,493                (+811)                331,633                         26          4:17 AM               162


Posted April 22: *Okay, so I've got it fixed. Found a place to put the "summary" in the main bit. At first I took a break, then I went back to it and felt better. Wrote where I got stuck, preparing it for the operation for a couple of days, and then I transplanted the "summary" into the story. The first day was only a couple of paragraphs (*17) before writing off of it. Then, for the next two days (*18 & *19), the sound of chainsaws roared through the air -- though, I could have sworn I heard the sound of dragon roars were heard along with it. Which makes me think of dragons riding chainsaws through the air like witches on brooms, but I must say: That might be painful. But then, that might explain the reason for the dragons' roars, I daresay. Uh, forgive me. I'm rambling weird stuff, now. *Ahem* Those next two days I copied and pasted what I wrote in the "summary" into my main writing piece, where I also wrote a lot to continue it off, as well.

Hmm. Speaking of rambling, though....

The night before (and into the wee morning of) Easter, I was writing, and getting terribly tired, I couldn't finish a sentence (I couldn't decide how to describe somebody who was sleeping). So, being me [tired] late at night, I started "making fun of" -- or rather, building of from in a wild/weird/crazy/funny fashion -- the perfectly normal sentence. I was literally in the middle of the sentence when I gave up and started thinking up random things. I couldn't help myself. I just typed it as it came. If you are a [late-night] writer and ever get writer's block [and/or tired], try writing random junk. You'll laugh your head [and hands and knees and maybe your eyes just for the heck of it] off.
Here it is: (in brackets was the sentence I was struggling on)

[...his long legs propped up and] that old man is walking on my lawn again. He's blind, but still. It makes me want to yank that cane out of his hand and give him a few whacks. I don't have a lawn. And that man is not old and is not blind. It's a baby hitting a kitten with a plastic golf club toy. It makes me want to yank that golf club out of his hand and give it a few whacks. It takes a few whacks to get a kitten in a hole, but that's fine. That's no kitten, it's a lion. And that baby is a golf ball. OMG The golf lion is choking on it. No matter. I know the Heimlich manure. Balls come out of its anus in two or three days, no problem. I'm sorry, I meant to say, "Heimlich manicure". And no, I'm not going to scratch that old, blind man's anus to get a lawn. I'd rather play golf as a baby riding a kitten into battle. Because playing polo rules in a weird fantasy world. I'm not writing any of this in my book. Just saying. I wrote this at 2:42 AM on Easter 2014, so good night because I have to church a bunny that lays eggs. Sorry, kids. The Easter Bunny ain't real. It's actually an Easter Platypus. But which came first? The Christ or the Easter egg? Not sure where the controversial chicken went but I know it was eyeing the goose who lays the golden eggs the other day. Might want to check if there's any golden chocolate chickens hatchin', 'cause I could've sworn I smelled the combination of eggs and chocolate. I can do a very good impression of a chick peeping around the corn like a tomboy. I feel like watching Tom and Jerry.  Shoot. Wi-fi is still down. Must share this weirdness tomorrow at coffee shop. Must shoot a cat and a mouse in a coffee shop. Must go to bed now. It's 2:53 AM and I'm going to have less than 7 hours and hours of sleep at this rat. Sorry, Jerry. I was thinking of dear Ratso. That muppet seriously needs a bath and a comb. Shut up, Me! Must... sleep.


...
Yeah. I was that tired.
Just to say, my book is not weird like this. Though, there IS one character....
I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING! ;-)

"Don't you just love green things?"
*visits Earth, loves Washington (The Evergreen State)*
*doesn't want to leaf*