Giant Box: Me and Writing

 The depths of National Novel Writing Month, that is. Except I haven’t written for a couple of days and that is somewhat worrisome. Yesterday I did write a bit about my characters’ motivations and some things that I might need to do to get this story to where I want it to be at the end. Also some stuff about editing, but I don’t think I’m supposed to be thinking about that right now.

 In other news, I’ve been conscripted to working every day this month. Is that the word I want? I actually want the word that means the thing when the British Navy used to grab guys off their own ships and make them serve in the Navy. What is that word? Impress. That’s it. I thought it might be so I checked my handy little computer dictionary. And it was. Um . . . impress and conscript are basically the same thing, so I don’t know why I was so . . . I think it’s the NaNo. The NaNo makes me do these things and type on and on for who knows how long . . .

 In even more other news, I mended this shirt that had a couple of holes in it with the handy needle and thread . . . from looking at it you can’t even tell where one of the holes was . . . the other one still has some signs but it looks better. I then was going to get started on embroidery, but . . . my needles were too small. So it’s off to Hobby Lobby . . . um, probably Saturday, because the stupid Hobby Lobby doesn’t open before 10:00 so it isn’t easy to get there before work. Stupid Hobby Lobby.

 Anyway, it’s about time to eat and then I must start getting ready for work.

 As in, tomorrow (or tonight at midnight, whichever) will be November. And that means National Novel Writing Month . . . and I can’t think of anything I want to write. I hate writing. I suck at writing! Why do I have to do anything!

 Um, anyway . . . I’m a kitty! Meow!

 . . .I would rather post this here than on my Livejournal account, where people might actually read it. I guess I’d rather just post here because at least there isn’t any possibility of people seeing it and then not responding, or not reading it at all.

 I haven’t been doing so well the past few days. I don’t know why. I think it’s the weather, mostly. It might be my job, but I think that’s just a part of the bigger whole. I think it’s all the social obligations I’ve made for myself that I know want to have nothing to do with. Of course, it’s possible that I want nothing to do with them because I just don’t feel like it. It seems rather recursive.

 And I just don’t want to go to work. And I don’t know what to say to get out of these social engagements. I don’t want to disappoint anyone, but I don’t want to do these things, either. I just want to relax, and get ready to work on my NaNo novel . . . which I hope I’ll regain interest in within the next week.

 So this post could have been about any number of things, but as it’s approaching time when I should leave the computer and go in to work . . . it’s going to be about work.

 What I have isn’t a job. It’s certainly not a career. All it is, is work. It’s not a lot of work. It’s fifteen hours a week. I don’t have enough experience to know if that’s part of the problem or not. I rather think it is. I like my free time, but I don’t manage it particularly well . . . but that’s really beside the point.

 The point is, it’s just hard. It’s hard to act like I don’t care that my job is far below my capabilities. I had a dream the other night, that the job I’d applied for and didn’t get was opening up again. I think the dream was brought on by other issues, but it’s still a valid concern. Will I ever have a chance to do more at the library beyond being a drudge? Is it my own fault? I want to quit, but . . . I don’t know. Before Topeka, I would work every day with the hope that more would come of it. And more was going to come . . . but then I left, and when I came back, it was too late for that chance. I didn’t get the training, I didn’t get the job.

 I don’t want to have to take an unfair standardized test and several more years of school just to do more in this field than be a book-bitch. It’s unreasonable.

 I don’t know. I’m just upset about so many different things right now. I’d quit, but things are so uncertain right now in the world that I’m afraid to, without having a definite something-else waiting for me.

 What a creative title that is! I am just really . . . yes, well . . .

 In one month . . . NaNoWriMo! I am very excited. I have ten ideas that I might choose to work on, . . . um, choose one from the ten, that is. Or I might come up with something completely different. This month . . . I don’t know. I’d like to either:

a) Write every day.

b) write 5,000 words.

c) know what I’m going to write for NaNo and do planning for it. . . this means have names and backstories for characters, not outlines or anything crazy like that.

or

d) finish at least one previous NaNo.

 Anyway, those are some goals. Seeing as how I haven’t reached any goals since July (writing goals, that is) I don’t know whether any of these will be reached or not. We shall see.

I have written every day, except for today. I think my minimum of words was 23. My maximum has so far been 525. I could probably get an average but am much too lazy and ignorant to try. But obviously it has been somewhere between 23 and 525. So . . . there!

I tried to stick to one thing, but got bored with it fairly early in. A couple of things have grabbed my attention rather a lot, and when I’m feeling more up to it and not all hot and sticky, I hope to work on them more.

No ‘last thing I wrote’ this month. Been bouncing around too much. Maybe next month.

 Hello, welcome back to the wonderful world of stress-induced insomnia. I am here tonight to tell you about the fact that I have written a little something every day this month. Including the fourth. Independence Day. Even with the attacking aliens with their Global Dominance. Because humanity saved the day and was then able to watch Hellboy. And drink Mike’s Hard Lemonade. And then pass out.

 On one day all I wrote was 36 words.

 ”I’m not the hero type. Clearly.” Sorry, my title just reminded me and made me paraphrase the dialogue from awesome-ness.

I’m trying again. I can’t make apologies for my last post. I needed that. I needed it a lot. I actually needed more than that, but I don’t want to say anything bad about anything. No one is at fault, not really. I just . . . I don’t know. As the title says, rejection + me = not good.

But this isn’t really about rejection. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten exactly what it was about. Something about writing. Something about the way I do character development and it’s incompatibility with the way things are done, sometimes. See, the thing is, my characters generally develop gradually. I can’t (and generally don’t) write character biographies before getting a good ways into the story. Or whatever. Trying to pigeonhole a character is generally a . . . bad thing. It’s led to some really bizarre characterization shifts. Or just plain awful ones. How am I supposed to know how they react to a certain type of situation until it comes up? How am I supposed to know what their parents are like until there’s something about their parents or their parents show up?

 So . . . bios and me . . . are like two unmixey things. And sure, the character I was applying for was a canon character so maybe I should have known how he might react to certain things and shit like that. But honestly there was a lot of leeway with him. I have no idea how to spell that word. It doesn’t matter, anyway.

 I think it’s kind of hard to tell a character from a bio . . . like I said, my characters that I have tried to force into their predestined paths . . . have rather violently rebelled against such things. It’s also kind of hard to tell a book from a query letter, a synopsis, and the first few chapters. And it’s hard to tell how well someone is going to do a specific job from a job application, a resume, and an interview. However, it is possible to tell how well someone can act from an audition, generally, but maybe not a general idea of how they’re going to behave after auditions. I don’t know what that last bit was about. I guess it’s still along the lines of rejection . . . I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I suppose most people don’t like it. Anyway, all I really wanted to say was that I can’t . . . I can’t develop characters in certain ways. And I can’t write bios.

 Hi there. I haven’t written anything much worth my time and effort in many months. Will that change? Who knows. I might as well not bother. Everything I ever do is rejected, anyway, so what’s the point? I’m sure I won’t even get into graduate school, so there’s no point in even applying. I can’t write a simple application for a stupid rpg group. I can’t even get a job which I should have gotten if I hadn’t been forced to move to a horrible hell-hole of an awful pit of despair. I can’t do anything. I failed. I always fail.

 I was thinking maybe I’d write a screenplay for ToBoldlyNano’s scriptfrenzy, but I honestly don’t have any desire at the moment to do anything. I’m hot, and I have a headache. All the cats are passed out. Or somewhere. They were passed out, anyway. Everyone is/was passed out but me. I am much too nice, I think. But how do I do anything but be nice? I mean, seriously? I worked really hard on . . . but no, it was a waste of time. Everything I do is a waste of time. But I generally enjoy it. I wish someone was online that I could chat with properly, but there isn’t. Gah!

 I think that’s enough whining. I’m sorry for that, but . . . well, maybe tomorrow I can get started back on the prequel to the novel that no one wants. Yeah, that’ll be good. At least then no one has to see it.

  Back again, with some more tidbits of randomness.

 April 11: There was no reason to cry, [the village] hadn’t been his home for a long time.

 April 12: He stopped singing.

 April 16: [his mother] had told him never to drink sea water, and not having a reason to, he never had.

 April 17: Then, he would climb down the rocks, to the sea.

 April 18: He could not go back, nor could he go forward. Not without more to drink.

  Well, that was quite an update. I really will try to keep up with this better, in the future. Of course, that from me . . . really doesn’t mean much.