To sex scene, or not to sex scene.

I have done all manor of procrastination so far today, even resorting to the hilariously atypical cleaning-the-kitchen drill. I also re-worked many of the templates for the novel blog, and added the portion of the entry I wrote last night that I’m not “sure” about.

So here goes the big question: Should I include the hermaphroditic sex scene in my novel? I’m not so much concerned at the content, but more that it’s atypical of the novel thus far. I’d love to hear what people have to say about including sex scenes in novels that are not necessarily about sex, in general. (Although I suppose I could go to the nanowrimo forums for that, which I’m NOT going to do today) and of course specifics about my novel are always appreciated. I seriously wonder if anyone has actually read any of this piece of crap.

I’m going to get writing just as soon as I post this entry. I have a goal of 5000 words today. This would put me up to 25,000, which is where I should be (half-way there on the 15th, baby). If not, I’ll just count on catching up over the week of thanksgiving, which will be super busy for me, (thanksgiving and x-mas with the relatives in Iowa) but I also won’t be working that week.

Why do I have this feeling I’m gong to be writing like crazy on Sunday the 30th?

morning, a nightmare you can’t wake up from

Now for the bad news. Despite bragging about the novel to an old friend I hadn’t seen in literally YEARS at the concert I went to last night, I got home and had absolutely no desire to write. In fact, I was such a zombie that I just sat and watched Nate play video games for what must have been an hour before I drug myself upstairs and threw myself in bed (where I promptly read for another hour instead of getting the sleep I SO needed and deserved.) In fact it is not so much that I had no desire to write, but that I had a negative desire. On a scale of one to ten, my desire to write was a negative thirty. In fact, I didn’t sit there and watch Nate because I was interested, or out of some desire to play the game myself. Oh no! I sat there because it was like doing nothing, and nothing was exactly the only thing I could think of that was a better idea than writing.

So this means I’ll have to write a 5k day. Did I plan this subconsciously to see if I could do it? Some part of me thinks I did. Only problem is, what day is it going to be? When do I have the mother-fucking time to write all day? Certainly not this weekend, as I’ve got SHIT planned in the middle of both days. Maybe SHIT is just code for “things you do in your break from writing all day”.

It is again 7:30 AY-TO-THE-MOTHER-FUCKING-EM, and this time I’m feeling it. Yesterday, I was all “oooh, it’s so pretty in here, sunrises are the best!” Like I was some pansy-ass kid on a fieldtrip to the flower garden or something. Now that my skull is threatening to implode as torture for not resting it long enough on my silken pillowcase, (And even though I don’t even USE a pillow in bed, that hard mattress sounds as soft as silk right now.) I see this sunflower on the horizon for what it really is, a daisy growing from a dung-heap.

I am not even focusing properly.

Well, there you go, double dose of me on the soon-to-be-caffeinated trail to terror that is the AM. Wish me willpower; cause staying awake now is almost as hard as writing two thousand words at midnight.

Last night, (for real last night, not yesterday’s last night, as in the last post’s last night), I went to see Cloud Cult at the Cedar Cultural Center with Laura and my friend Ryan. The old friend I ran into was this guy Ray who I knew back when I used to play music. He was there working the soundboard.

It was a decent show. I felt like they were pretty scattered all over, and also like they maybe were trying to sound like some other band… *cough*Sigur*cough*Ros*cough*, an impression I never got from their album (I’ll let you know about he new one after I listen to it today). But still, Sigur Ros are pretty lofty company, if you can pull it off, and we all agreed that we’d go see them again, if only to find out if they bring the horrible stage dancers to every concert with them. (The guy painting a canvas on stage was cool though. If I ever have a band, and am doing a CD release party, I’ve got to remember to get me one of those.)

On the downside of the evening, I feel pretty horribly because my brother John told me about the concert back last Saturday, and asked me if I wanted to go. I said sure, yes, I was excited even, and he said something like “cool.” And that was it. Not “Cool, can I call you at 7:00 the night of the show from a coffee shop by your house and get a ride?” It was just “cool.” But I still feel bad as hell about it. I was down there at six, and I didn’t get his message until 9:00, right before the band went on. (My cell phone is unreliable as hell, and I think it may randomly just decide to turn itself off rather than suffer the indignantcy of allowing me to hear it ring.) So yeah, I had been wondering where he was, then I checked my messages, and I knew. I’m a shitty older brother.

Whatever anybody tells you, sleep-deprivation is not your friend.

fuck, forgot to post, forgot my brain

I forgot to post this yesterday when I wrote it, which means when I say yesterday (next time I say yesterday) I mean Wednesday, when today is Friday, and the day I wrote this was Thursday:

I felt like writing twice yesterday, and both times I didn’t DO it… then when I finally sat down to, I was horribly depressed and couldn’t remember what I’d wanted to write about earlier. Finally around midnight Laura reminded me that the point is to just write it, and not care about whether it’s going to ultimately “work”. I wish she’d told me that around 10:30, when I sat down to do it and would rather have put a gun in my mouth. So I began writing in earnest around midnight. The whole day I was thinking that day’s 2K would be a breeze, but I only ended up getting just under one.

I was also surfing around on other people’s novel pages (for those of you asking how the hell I could only have gotten 1000 pages in over two hours), and there are some really good ones out there. This guy, DrFrag who has apparently already written over 51K (but has only posted excerpts) is absolutely fucking hilarious. I really want to read his novel. I wonder if I emailed him if he’d want to share it with me. I really just want to see if the whole thing is as good as his excerpts.

It’s pretty insane how many people have already finished. I have this feeling that if I were making a living writing, I’d have to be writing over 5K per day as well. (That’s one way you could have already finished.) It actually doesn’t seem that implausible. When I’m “on a roll” I can easily whip out 2K in a couple of hours. If I had all day… well, hopefully I’d be “on a roll” more often… like two or three times a day.

early to rise

It’s a little weird showing up to work before anybody else. Laura’s car is still el-busted, and I had to drive her to work again this morning. I decided just to come in rather than go home and sleep for another hour as I did yesterday. This may be the earliest I’ve ever shown up to work. I am the only one here. My boss, who claims she wakes up at 5:30am isn’t even here.

There is a nice yellow sunrise glow about the office.

The previous portion of this entry was written before I got distracted by what I’m suppose to be doing at work… actual, er, work. It’s hard to believe that I have already been here for an hour and a half, and it is still an hour and a half before I usually get here. (Yes, I got here at 7:30, it is now 9:00, and I usually waltz in around 10:30. Insane.)

Here’s hoping Laura remembers to call and have her car towed to a repair shop today sometime… (not to mention calling the repair shop itself.)

I’ll update later about the novel… lets just say it’s not getting any easier.

better memory through bloggistry

Nine o’clock, and I’m just getting started for the day. Tonight’s 2000 isn’t going to be easy. I think I’m hitting that second week difficulty that the newsletter was discussing. I avoided that feeling by starting a new plot-line last night. Consequently, I wrote several hundred extra. I may actually be caught up now with my daily goals, but I did the calculations, and I’m not yet caught up to where I should be if I had started on day one.

I am just whining like a little bitch.

I finished a novel I was reading today. The Eye, the Ear, and the Arm. I think I’ve mentioned it before. I have this document full of descriptions of the novels I’ve finished before. It’s just a huge text file, and there are entries all the way back through 1995. Nearly eight years of reading history. It’s full of spoilers, as the original reason I started writing in it was to remind myself what each book had been about. But anyway I think I’ve decided that I’m going to enter them into movable type. That way I’ll be able to look at the list in different ways, and enter new ones from anywhere, instead of having to paste them in when I get home as I have sometimes done. They will probably get their own blog. Look for a side link here soon.

Anyway, I’m off to write. Wish me luck.

disciple of the less easy path

A universe spins around me. In my bubble, I’m writing. Outside of the bubble, others are lost and cannot find their way back. Still others are already far ahead of me. I will not burst the bubble… I must not read other people’s novels in progress… damnit.

Last night I got together with Alex, who is also attempting this crazy nano-rhino thing. We didn’t do all that much writing, but I saw lots of pictures from when he went to boot camp. And we smelled like smoke when we left the coffee shop. Actually, I did write a bit, and it was immensely helpful to get out of the house to write. (Plus, free wireless access!) I think next time I might go by myself to find out if part of the help was his company, or if it was all location that did it.

Unfortunately, my word count is still short after the weekend, (what happened to being more productive when I don’t have to work?) but not nearly so much as I was on Friday. I’m less than a thousand words behind now, not including today’s 1900.

Actually, I know exactly what happened to my word count. Laura decided we should go x-mas shopping on Saturday because her Marshal Fields discount was going to expire on Sunday. We have most of the shopping done for my dad’s family and got quite a few other things while we were at it. (Including the PS2 Eye Toy I mentioned yesterday, which is super fun, and JakII, which is not as much as it could be–It’s possible I’m not far enough into it yet, who knows?)

In other news, I am finally able to use MT-Blacklist, and after following “The Less Easy Path” to installation, I was overjoyed to have eradicated the 30 spam comments I received just last night–all in one fell swoop. I am very seriously contemplating sending jay allen some money to show how much I appreciate his efforts.

hook, lines, and a sinking feeling

I spent a lot of time thinking about plot this morning. Is it better to plan it all out, or to just let it happen? I have a rudimentary idea of where things are going now, but I feel like it’s pretty cleche, and I haven’t figured out certain motivations yet either. I keep changing my mind, actually.

I think I need an entirely new and fresh perspective in the novel, perhaps I should bring in another plotline… I only really have two right now, even though I’ve got about three different perspectives. I really should have gone the absurdist route with this… I think I would be much happier writing in random strangers that just die horrible deaths. I don’t know how I ended up with this crappy drama, although i guess drama is really what keeps you reading. There has to be some plot or motivation. Is it too late to change my tone entirely? I’m afraid it probably is. I’m keeping everything plausible, at least to me, and I guess I should just finish and be done with it. If it sucks ass, I can let it suck ass… But I guess the whole point is that I’d rather it didn’t.

So much doubt, so little writing.

I’ve told myself today that as soon as I catch up to where I “should be”, I’ll let myself play all these video games that I’ve been meaning to play. Last weekend I picked up the new stupid Morrowind with expansions, and Ape Escape 2, (which is pretty fun, I took a break and played it briefly the other day), and then yesterday I picked up Jak 2, (I’m SUPER excited about it) and this PS2 Eye thing… there are like 10 games that come with it, they all look pretty stupid and simple, but I’m excited to play them anyway.

OK, enough procrastination. I’m off to write myself into as many corners as I can find!

my open relationship revisited

[novel update: I’m at 437 words, at 9:38pm. As soon as I post this blog entry, I’ll be starting in earnest. I’ve even taken my laptop into the bathroom with me. Yes, I know that was something you didn’t want to know.]

I was blogsurfing today, and stumbled upon this guy who was talking about how he cheated on girls, and how he’d never been able to stop. That’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is that what he wrote about his emotional perspective and relationship “history” seemed at the time very similar to the way I would describe things. Actually, the more I sat there and thought about it, the less our histories sounded similar, but at the time, it “struck a chord” (that’s the way I put it in the comment I left on his blog). When I write about people’s blogs, or their entries, I usually link to them, but I don’t have the link handy, and I wanted to post this stuff…it’s all stuff I wrote that I thought I was going to post in response to his blog entry… but then I realized that, at the end of his entry, the message was clear, he wanted to change. He had met someone new, and he really thought this would be a new leaf for him… so much of what I said below just wasn’t relevant. (I went on about my open relationship.) So I deleted it from the comment, and decided to post it here instead.

I guess my point is that I knew at an early age that I was going to have trouble with commitment. Even in my 2 year relationship (3 years if you count the year afterwards that we kept trying to make it work, even though she could never trust me again) we started out with a 1 or 2 month period where we were “dating other people”. (Until we both decided we were “it” for each other. Last mistake like that I’ll make.) Almost every relationship I’ve been in has either a) had a point where my girlfriend decided she didn’t want to be in this open relationship anymore, or b) fizzled because somehow lack of commitment turned into lack of intensity (to be fair, there may have been any number of other factors involved in any of those “fizzles”.) At least, that was true until just recently.

A little over two years ago, I went through what felt like a very long dry spell in relationships. I only dated one or two people in a 2 or 3 year period… and I was just about ready to abandon the whole idea of “open relationships” entirely. It seemed the older people were the less likely they were to accept the idea of a serious relationship where you could still date other people.

Then I met my current girlfriend. We’ve been dating for 2 and a half years, and are still going strong. We’ve both “made out” with other people plenty of times… (we have a “no sex” rule–intercourse only, oral sex is fine). Anyway, it’s working great. We’ve lived together for over a year, and I think this truly is “it”. I mean, why would I ever leave her? Why would she leave me? We’re both happy with the situation… So take it from me, it can work, you’ve just got to find the right girl.

Yes, I wrote all that crap in a comment on someone else’s blog. But I changed my mind at the last minute. I’m now returning to my regularly scheduled slavish novel writing.

novel-T

Well, I’m about 1000 words short now. My completing this beast depends on being able to write more on the weekends than I can during the week. I have plenty of excuses for last night… I didn’t start actually writing until at least 11:30 (and not really until midnight), but those are still just excuses. Hopefully I can eek out more than 2000 today, and catch up fully by the end of the weekend. I think I’ve decided though, that if I don’t complete by the end of this month, I’ll make every effort to continue until I do finish. If that means it takes me two months, so be it.

Where is this enthusiasm while I’m writing?

novelitis

Well, I’m a couple hundred words behind… (never mind that my story is going nowhere fast.) I’ve noticed this novel is doing wonders for my blogging. This week is the first one in probably months that I’ve posted four days in a row.

There is an immense sense of accomplishment that goes along with finishing my obligatory 2000 words. So far I’ve only felt that twice, and last night I was tossing and turning the whole night, agonizing about whether I should get up and try to finish again. I hope tonight I can actually motivate myself to get 2200 words in, hopefully before it’s time for bed. I have family dinner before I can start, which isn’t going to help anything.

Alex sent me a link to Blovel 2003 this afternoon. I will probably sign up… but since I’m posting my actual novel to a different blog than I normally post to, they’ll only get my novel updates, not the blog posts about them. When I surfed the site earlier, I found that the meta-novel posts were actually more interesting, I felt than the ones of the actual novel. It’s probably a lot like reading the nanowrimo forums… which seems incredibly addicting. I’ll bet there are hundreds of people who don’t finish each year from just reading those forums. I also wonder if anyone has done a percentage study/comparison of how many people post on the forums regularly, versus how many people finish their 50.000 words.

I discovered today that amazon’s new “search entire text of book” feature is good for something. You get to the end of their “sample pages” you can just search for the next page number! I’d never make it through a whole book that way (I’m guessing), but I’m excited to try! Who wants to make bets about how long the page numbers will be searchable?

Also, I’ve decided I really want to read Rucker’s The Hacker and the Ants.

(PS, this entry is over 330 words, words that could have gone towards the novel, damnit.)